


What A Fool Believes

by EAWeek



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alien Planet, F/M, Mystery, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-06
Updated: 2015-05-06
Packaged: 2018-03-29 07:58:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 41,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3888508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EAWeek/pseuds/EAWeek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>River Song summons the Eleventh Doctor to the beautiful planet Vareda to celebrate the excavation of an ancient temple.  A gruesome attack on the Doctor leads River to believe that someone on Vareda would do anything to keep her discovery buried forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. What A Fool Believes--Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is another fic cross-posted from fanfiction.net. The story takes place between “A Christmas Carol” and “The Impossible Astronaut.” Some of the content has been rendered alt-timeline by “Day of the Doctor.”

Title: **What a Fool Believes**

Author: E.A. Week

E-mail: e.a.week at gmail dot com; also on Live Journal as eaweek.

Summary: River Song summons the Eleventh Doctor to the beautiful planet Vareda to celebrate the excavation of an ancient temple. A gruesome attack on the Doctor leads River to believe that someone on Vareda would do anything to keep her discovery buried forever.

Category: _Doctor Who_. Eleven/ River; Amy/Rory.

Distribution: Feel free to link to this story, but **please** drop me at least a brief e-mail and let me know you've done this.

Feedback: Comments are always welcome! Loved it? Hated it? Leave a review, shoot me an email or a PM and let me know why!

Disclaimer: Copyrights to all characters in this story belong to their respective creators, production companies, and studios. I'm just borrowing them, honest!

Credit where credit is due: The story title is shamelessly stolen from the Doobie Brothers.

Continuity: Takes place between “A Christmas Carol” and “The Impossible Astronaut.” Some of the content has been rendered alt-timeline by “Day of the Doctor.”

**Story rating : This story is rated M for sex (somewhat graphic in places), language, and mild gore.**

 

_Prologue_

Water splashed against Rory’s ear as he lifted his head to breathe, the sound muffled again when he rotated his upper body back beneath the blue-green surface. Beneath him, light shimmered through the crystalline liquid, refracting into rainbows and casting auroras of glorious color on the tiles far below. He couldn’t guess at the depth of the pool, but deep it was, deeper than even most diving tanks Rory had seen.

Swimming here had taken some getting used to, and he still didn’t feel entirely comfortable staring so far down, as though he were swimming suspended between two tall buildings. Still, the pleasure was worth conquering some fear. The pool was enormous, the water very clean, never too hot or too cold, and he only had to compete with two other people for space. He especially liked the ornate deck area, the gorgeous rococo pillars, the black-veined pink marble, the spotless tile. With no lane lanes below or flags above, he’d memorized a couple of other landmarks to help time his turn at each wall.

Swimming backstroke, he could gaze up at the surrounding library, the shelves full of books that rose, stack upon stack, to an extraordinary height, terminating in a vaulted ceiling overhead. Rory could look straight up through panes of some glass-like substance, watching constellations of stars wink as the ship whirled through space.

He didn’t always enjoy traveling with the Doctor, and there were many times when he’d just as soon be back in Leadworth with Amy, living life one day at a time, but he had to admit that a luxurious swimming pool at the bottom of a vast library in a space ship exerted its own pull. _I can put up with a lot for this_ , he thought, tucking his body into a somersault and pushing off the wall. He glided underwater and surfaced in an easy freestyle.

As he approached the opposite end of the pool, he spotted a leg dangling into the water: comely kneecap, shapely calf, slender foot, painted toenails. His pulse gave a happy jump, and he picked up the pace, wondering if Amy had sought him out for a game of Poseidon and the Saucy Mermaid.

“Hello!” he said, surfacing with a grin.

Amy withdrew her foot. “Get dressed,” she said.

Rory’s face fell.

Amy laughed and tweaked the end of his nose. “I’ll make it up to you later.”

“Promise?” Rory teased, pushing his goggles up to his forehead.

“Promise. Now, c’mon, it’s a surprise for you.”

“Why… is the Doctor making up for something?”

Amy folded her arms, giving Rory a pointed expression. “So insecure,” she started.

Rory pointed up at the skylight, where the stars continued to blur past. “We haven’t even materialized yet. What’s this surprise all about?”

“It’s a present for your birthday.”

“Even if we were at home, my birthday wouldn’t be until January.”

“I just decided it’s your birthday, okay? And the Doctor said we can go somewhere fun for you.”

“Well, there’s a change.” Rory hauled himself out of the water and grabbed for a towel. “Dare I ask what he has in mind? Something that maybe doesn’t involve mortal peril, for once?”

Amy laughed, “Mortal peril is the Doctor’s idea of fun.”

(ii)

“Oh, my goodness, Chancellor; I didn’t recognize you!” The little functionary looked up from the psychic paper and gazed at the threesome with eyes full of panic.

“Not to worry; I can see you’re a busy man—you can’t be expected to know everything.” The Doctor waved his arm at Amy and Rory in a grand gesture. “These are my esteemed guests: Lady Amelia of the Pond and Sir Rory the Roman.”

“Right this way, right this way!” Bowing and bobbing, the functionary led the time-travelers through a set of heavy velvet curtains and down a flight of steps. Amy realized they were in some kind of raised balcony full of comfortable seats, with a spectacular view out over an enormous amphitheater.

“No _way_!” Rory breathed.

“Suits your fancy, does it?” the Doctor grinned.

“It’s—it’s—where are we, exactly?” Rory asked.

After the functionary had seated them and left, the Doctor said, “The Pan-Galactic Olympics of 4524.”

Amy stared down. “Is that a _pool_? It makes even the TARDIS pool look like the Leadworth duck pond.”

“We’re in the Cressini Asteroid Natatorium,” the Doctor said.

“But—” Rory was spellbound. “How long is it?”

“Four hundred meters,” the Doctor said. “For this race, anyway.”

“Which event?” Rory asked eagerly.

“The men’s 400 IM,” the Doctor said.

“What did you mean, ‘for this race?’” Rory asked.

“The length of the pool can be changed for the length of the event,” the Doctor explained.

“Unbelievable,” Rory said. “You mean thousands of years in the future they’re still fussing with movable bulkheads?”

“No, the actual walls of the pool move. You should see it when it’s set up for the three thousand—”

Amy interrupted, “So where are we, VIP seating?” She looked around the balcony, where here and there, a few well-dressed people sat. They looked like visiting dignitaries, mostly plump and middle-aged. The number of empty seats took Amy by surprise.

“Royal box,” the Doctor said, sounding smug.

Amy preened, settling herself more comfortably in the big chair. Rory leaned forward, staring down at the pool, at the officials, at the spectators, crammed by the thousands in their seats. He looked up—and up—and asked the Doctor, “How many people does this place hold, anyway?”

“Three million,” the Doctor said.

“Shut up!” Amy said, also staring around. “That many?”

“It’s the biggest stadium in this quadrant,” the Doctor said. “Now, you should’ve been here for the Intergalactic Cup of 2372—the Federation of—”

“Shh,” Rory said. “They’re starting.”

A row of tall, muscular men was walking out onto the pool deck, led by officials wearing brightly-colored robes.

“Full-body suits are illegal,” Rory said, squinting down at the athletes.

“Not now, they’re not,” the Doctor said.

“What are those made of?”

“A mixture of latex and polyurethane, sprayed directly onto the body in liquid form,” the Doctor said. “Dries in a second, and they’re good to go.”

“What about after the race?” asked Amy. “Do they wear those things all day?”

“No, it just peels right off,” the Doctor told her. “A completely new suit for each race, and the material gets melted down and re-used the next day.

“Ouch,” Rory said.

“Well, that’s one way to get a waxing,” Amy joked.

“No, they all wax before the meet even starts,” the Doctor said. “Everyone crops their hair, even the women.”

“What kind of goggles are those?” asked Rory

“Eyepieces,” the Doctor provided. “They fit right into the eye socket.”

“Swimming’s gone high-tech,” Rory snorted.

“Oh, you should see it in another thousand years or so,” the Doctor said. “This is nothing.”

“There’s ten finalists?” Rory counted.

“Thirty, actually,” the Doctor said. “This is the third heat of the finals.”

Rory scanned the sleek, black-clad men, observing that not one stood less than six and a half feet tall, all broad-shouldered, lean in the waist, very powerful. He could hear Amy’s breath shifting a little.

“So, who’s the favorite for gold?” asked Amy, wrapping her fingers around Rory’s arm.

“Titanium,” the Doctor corrected. “Second place is platinum. Gold is third place, silver is fourth, and bronze is fifth.”

“Five medals?” asked Amy.

“Trophies, actually. And that bloke right in the middle, in lane five, is the favorite. He’s representing Earth—Alistair Jones-Hennessy, a descendant of an old Earth friend of mine, Jo Grant—Jo Jones after she was married.”

The men were climbing up onto the staring blocks. In mid-air, over the pool, there suddenly appeared a vast blue hologram with the athlete’s names, home planets, and their times from the preliminary round.

Rory said, “Those times can’t be real.”

“Just watch,” the Doctor smiled.

The men crouched into their racing starts. Amy saw that they had placed one foot into a kind of backstop, pushing against it with some pressure.

There was a high-pitched bleep, and the ten swimmers rocketed off the blocks as if they’d been fired from ten cannons.

“No _way_!” Rory yelled over the cheering crowd.

“Spring-loaded backstop,” the Doctor said, laughing at Rory’s expression.

The men surfaced and began the butterfly leg of the race, an incredibly fast stroke, keeping their bodies flat to the surface of the water. Rory’s mind boggled.

“How do they turn if there’s no walls?” he yelled.

“Wait and see!”

Rory didn’t have to wait long. The men finished their last stroke of fly and suddenly dolphin-dived, vanishing beneath the waves. Rory saw ten quick black underwater streaks, then the swimmers surfaced on their backs, arms whirling as they began their backstroke.

“There’s marks on the bottom of the pool to tell them when to change strokes,” the Doctor said.

Disgruntled, Rory folded his arms. “All that time I wasted practicing IM transition turns!”

Amy laughed, giddy and breathless from the sheer speed of the race. “The coach of Rory’s swim club in Leadworth was a real taskmaster,” she told the Doctor.

“He was an ogre,” Rory said, shouting to be heard above the din of the crowd. “He used to make us do extra butterfly sets if we snuck an extra breath going into or out of our turns.”

The athletes were approaching a line of flags strung up over the pool, and as they passed under it, they all dived backwards beneath the water, turned onto their stomachs, and when they surfaced again, they were swimming a fast, aggressive breaststroke.

“They’re dolphin-kicking,” Rory complained.

“It’s legal for this stroke now,” the Doctor said. “About two thousand years ago, the federations decided breaststroke was too slow and boring, so they changed the kick.” He leaned forward and said, “This is where Alistair will win it,” he said. “He’s a brilliant breaststroker.”

Indeed, the Earth swimmer was already extending his lead on the other nine men, darting forward with his upper body, a hummingbird-like motion that was incongruous to see on such a tall, powerful man. Each lunge forward was propelled by the undulations of an incredibly powerful dolphin kick. And before Rory knew what had happened, Alistair finished his last stroke with another dive underwater, and he surfaced several meters later in a fast, flat freestyle. By now, the crowd was screaming.

“He’s winning, he’s winning!” Amy shrieked.

Rory watched the Earth swimmer complete the last hundred meters of the race, only lifting his face for air every eight or ten strokes. _Incredible; do they give them oxygen before the race starts?_ Rory wondered. And then Alistair finished, making a spectacular lunge into the wall.

Rory stared at the digital time clock and yelled, “Three twenty-eight oh-four? That’s sick!”

Amy was on her feet with everyone else, jumping up and down and screaming, clapping her hands. “Yeahhh!” she was yelling. “Yaaay, Earth-boy!”

The Doctor was laughing at his companions’ vastly different reactions: Amy thrilled, Rory awed and miffed.

“What’s the world record at home?” Amy asked Rory when she calmed down, laughing and grabbing his arm.

“When we left, it was four oh-three eighty-four,” Rory said, shaking his head. “I guess Michael Phelps can eat his heart out.”

“Here come the results,” Amy said. The blue hologram screen had appeared again, confirming that Alistair Jones-Hennessy had won the race with a new galactic record. Rory scanned down the results, humbled by the times and fascinated by the array of planets represented. Down on the deck, the other swimmers were congratulating Alistair.

“So, are only humans allowed to compete?” Rory asked the Doctor.

The Doctor started to answer, then fell silent. Amy and Rory saw he was staring at the blue hologram. The screen continued to hover in the air, but it had gone blank and was blinking with some kind of static.

“What’s wrong with it?” asked Amy. Most people weren’t paying attention, still too excited by the race results to really notice the big screen.

“It shouldn’t be doing that,” the Doctor murmured, and a moment later, the screen flashed to sudden life again.

Amy let out a peal of laughter. The Doctor heaved a loud sigh, and muttered under his breath, “What does she want this time?”

“What’s all that about?” Rory asked Amy. “Is that a message for someone?”

“Yeah, it’s for himself,” Amy said, tilting her head in the Doctor’s direction. “It’s a summons from the missus.”

The big blue hologram screen now displayed, in enormous letters, the words

HELLO SWEETIE

and beneath them, a set of coordinates.

“Am I missing something?” Rory asked, still baffled.

The Doctor was already heading for the exit. Amy told her husband, “It’s River’s way of saying ‘Mrs. Peel, we’re needed.’ Only Mr. Peel, I guess. Dr. Peel?”

“Come along, Ponds,” the Doctor said, somehow managing to sound grumpy and put-upon, but also excited, twitching with eagerness to be away. “God only knows the trouble she’s in this time.”

**To be continued…**


	2. What A Fool Believes--Chapter One

_Chapter One_

Applause was the first thing they heard when the TARDIS doors opened—applause, and childish, happy laughter.

An adult voice called, “The storyteller’s here!” A tall woman came to the Doctor’s side. “We’re so glad you could make it! Such a spectacular arrival!” She peered around Amy, trying to see into the ship’s interior, but Rory blocked her view, pulling shut the door with a quick tug.

“Storyteller? Oh, yes, of course!” The Doctor’s expression shifted from confused to comically idiotic. He pretended to stagger a bit. “Bless me, how could I have forgotten?”

The kids kept laughing. They sat in a large room, walls painted a cheery yellow, large windows allowing plenty of sunlight. But the brightness of the space couldn’t mask the hospital sights and sounds and smells, nor could it disguise the conditions of the children, some of whom were clearly quite ill.

The tall woman led the Doctor to a large, elaborately decorated chair in the center of the floor, and a gaggle of kids surrounded him, some able to move on their own, others on crutches or in wheelchairs. Amy and Rory edged over to one side, watching the Doctor. Amy wondered how he would improvise his way out of this one. There was no sign of River.

“Well,” the Doctor began. “So, you want a story?”

“Yes!” the kids shrieked.

“What kind of story?”

A chorus of different opinions rose up, but everyone seemed to want a story both adventurous and funny.

“All right!” the Doctor smiled, and Amy realized he was enjoying this turn of events. “Here’s one for you! Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin. This is a very special story—the story of a little girl named Amelia Pond and the Raggedy Doctor.”

Amy gave a small start, and Rory squeezed her hand.

The Doctor launched into the story. “Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Amelia who lived in a big, spooky old house in the middle of the country. Amelia didn’t have a mum or dad; she lived with her aunt, who used to go out a lot at night.”

Amy tried not to giggle.

“Amelia was worried, because there was a crack in her bedroom wall. Now, this was no ordinary crack—it was a crack in space and time, and every night, Amelia fell asleep with dreams of the whole universe pouring through her mind.”

By now, even the adults were bewitched, less by the story than by the cadences of the Doctor’s voice. Amy stood listening to this unusual rendition of her childhood—well, one of her childhoods, anyway. She could remember one as clearly as the other, though sometimes she had to pause when trying to recall a specific memory. Had this or that occurred during her first lifetime, or her second?

Rory, of course, could recall three lives—his two lives in Leadworth, and his life as a Roman soldier. Although that identity, that past, had been entirely fabricated, it was no less real to him, and he would often startle Amy with some personal anecdote from the first century AD or a historical moment he had witnessed.

Rory looked around the big room, studying each child and wondering what illness or accident had brought them here. Nearby stood an auburn-haired woman of about forty, her gaze fixed on a small girl in a wheelchair. The girl was wizened and hunched over, completely bald, like a little old woman. And yet she was smiling, laughing at the Doctor’s story along with the other kids.

In a quiet murmur, Rory asked, “Is that your daughter?”

Honey-brown eyes brimming, the woman nodded.

The laughter grew even louder now: the Doctor had gotten to the part about Prisoner Zero, and he was barking to impersonate the Rottweiler.

“He’s good at this,” Rory said to Amy. “He missed his calling.”

An entrance to the room opened, double doors swooshing apart, and in strolled a tall, handsome black man in some kind of official uniform: white trousers and a tunic with a green crescent moon embroidered over the heart. He stared at the Doctor for a moment, looking flummoxed, then he smiled and stepped to the side, leaning against a wall.

Amy and Rory listened to the story, which the Doctor embellished to make more exciting and edited to avoid the more personal details. He made Rory sound dashing and heroic, and Amy considerably less temperamental. The story ended with Amy’s parents returning through the time crack, where Prisoner Zero had been planning to feed them to his maggot-like offspring.

“Eew.” Amy’s nose wrinkled.

“And they all lived happily ever after,” the Doctor concluded.

“What happened to Amelia?” asked a girl nearby.

The Doctor stood. “She married Rory, the brave nurse, and they raised dozens of children in a pretty little cottage.”

“Dozens?” Amy snorted under her breath. “Do I look like a rabbit?”

The Doctor made his way through the gaggle of children, who were clamoring for more.

“Sorry—sorry—that’s all for today,” he told them.

The auburn-haired woman approached him. “Thank you,” she said. “That’s my daughter Miranda, there in that wheelchair. It’s the first time I’ve seen her smile in months. I never thought I’d hear her laugh again.”

“Oh, it was my pleasure,” the Doctor said.

An orderly pushed Miranda’s wheelchair over to her mother.

“Mummy, did you hear the funny story?” the girl asked.

“Of course, sweetheart. Did you say thank you?”

Up close, Rory could see the girl’s dry, mottled skin, her lack of even eyelashes and eyebrows. She would have been a beauty, like her mother, but illness was devouring her from the inside out. Her limbs were thin, twig-like, legs twisted beneath her body.

“Thank you!” the girl said, smiling up at the Doctor with those same honey-colored eyes.

“You’re welcome.” The Doctor smiled down, sad but resigned. Rory could only imagine how much illness and suffering the Doctor had witnessed in his lifetime.

The woman offered a hand. “I’m Iris Escalus,” she said. “This is my daughter, Miranda.”

“Iris, Miranda, I’m the Doctor.” The Time Lord introduced his friends. “These are Amy and Rory.”

“Amy and Rory?” Iris inquired, lifting an eyebrow. “Or Amelia and Rory?”

“Amelia, in the flesh,” Amy said. “Only without dozens of children.” She gave the Doctor a poke with her foot.

The tall black man now approached. “Well, this is interesting,” he said. “We just had a message that our storyteller has been delayed—something about a broken-down intercity tram.”

The Doctor extended a hand. “I’m the Doctor, and it was my pleasure to tell the children a story.”

“We’re a pair of doctors, then,” the man smiled, holding out his hand in return. “Dr. Hector Griffith, Director of Research and Chief Officer, here at Royal Hospital.”

“Do you always attend storytelling hour?” the Doctor asked.

Dr. Griffith laughed, but his eyes showed no mirth. He side-stepped the Doctor’s question. “What brings you to Vareda? I’m guessing you’re from off-world, based on your clothes.”

“I’m looking for Dr. River Song,” the Doctor said, glancing around, as if he expected River to come crashing through a window. “I should have thought she’d find us by now—loves a spectacular entrance, that one.”

“Professor Song is a guest of Queen Lavinia—excavating the Seventeenth Great Temple, isn’t she?” asked Dr. Griffith.

“She sent for me,” the Doctor said, his chest puffing out a bit. “We’re… colleagues.”

“In that case, we’ll have someone escort you to the palace, where a steward can find Professor Song for you,” Dr. Griffith said. “She’s probably out at the dig site.”

“Mummy, I’m tired,” Miranda interrupted, probably bored by the adult conversation. “Can I go to sleep now?”

“Yes, of course—Nurse Perdita will take you back.” Iris leaned down to kiss her daughter.

Nurse Perdita waited while Iris fussed over the sick child. Amy noticed three interesting spots over each of the female orderly’s eyebrows: amber-colored and small, rather like moles. At last Iris straightened up with a sigh, watching as Nurse Perdita wheeled Miranda out of the bright room.

Iris then turned to the three newcomers. She’d been maintaining a happy façade for her daughter’s sake, and now it began to crumble. She appeared to be in some distress, which the time travelers could sense. “If you’ll excuse me, I really need to speak with Dr. Griffith,” she said. “But the royal palace is right across the city square, a five-minute walk. Ask for the Lady Bianca when you get there—she’s my mother, the Queen’s steward.”

“Thanks,” the travelers chorused. Amy wasn’t sorry to leave children’s ward behind.

“How can there still be cancer this far in the future?” she asked as soon as they were out of the room, walking through a long corridor.

“Cancer’s caused by cellular mutations,” Rory said. “There must be different environmental toxins everywhere—in the food, the water, the air… and cancer-causing viruses would probably just mutate and travel wherever humans go.” Rory glanced at the Doctor. “Am I right?”

“Hmm?” The Doctor didn’t seem to be really paying attention. “Oh, yes, of course.”

Rory made a face; Amy smiled and reached for his hand. They took a lift down several floors to the main lobby, a space as white and vast as a futuristic airplane hangar. A pair of tall sliding doors opened to the outside, the frosted glass etched with the same green crescent moon Rory had noticed on everyone’s uniforms.

Amy and Rory both gasped when they stepped outside.

“It’s beautiful!” Amy exclaimed.

Rory agreed. “Now _this_ is space travel.”

“City square” didn’t do it justice, a busy confluence of at least six major thoroughfares. The avenues were all broad, each running in two directions, with a row of magnificent trees growing down its grassy median. The trees grew to an incredible height, creating a leafy canopy wide enough to shade the roadways from one side to the other. Amy and Rory saw no private vehicles. Along each roadway ran sleek white trams, the cars emblazoned with the silhouette of that same tree.

“The palamon,” the Doctor said, following their gaze. “The royal tree, the symbol of Vareda.”

The streets could be crossed via pretty arched bridges, all of them planted with beds and boxes of flowers and small blossoming trees. Amy was so delighted that she grabbed Rory’s hand and skipped ahead of him a couple of steps.

“It’s so _clean_ ,” Rory said, inhaling. He looked up, turning his head, staring at the immaculate buildings, tall and white, their windows gleaming silver, reflecting the light. An alien sun glowed overhead, and the clouds in the sky held an unusual ochre-colored tint. “Is the whole planet like this?” He peered out across the footbridges and thoroughfares.

“It’s a model planet,” the Doctor nodded. “Clean, peaceful, and efficient. Rather dull, really. People come here from all over to study the Varedans’ engineering and designs.”

The royal palace was more wide than tall, a collection of buildings whose architecture, while varied, engaged the eye with its grace and symmetry. Flags bearing an image of the palamon tree flew from many turrets.

“Can we see more?” Amy pleaded. “Please?”

“First let’s find out what River wants,” the Doctor said. “I’m sure she can arrange a tour for us, if she hasn’t already sparked a riot or started a revolution.”

(ii)

As soon as the visitors had departed, Iris followed Hector into a private lift and up to his suite of offices on the top floor. From here, they had a panoramic view over the entire capital, the buildings becoming more scattered as the city gave way to the rolling green savannas of Fleance, Vareda’s principal continent.

Today the view didn’t impress Iris in the least, nor did it give her any pleasure. “You have the results?” she inquired.

“Please, sit,” Hector said.

She shook her head. “No. Tell me. Now.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “The tumors have stopped shrinking.”

“But the treatment was working!”

“Iris,” he said. “It was a slim chance at best.”

“You _promised_ —”

“I said it was worth a try,” he corrected.

“So, try again.”

Hector ran hand across the top of his head; there were days he hated his job, and this was one of them. “It would only be more of the same,” he said. “And look how sick it made Miranda—do you really want to see her go through all that again?”

“What else can we do?”

“Make her comfortable. Let her travel, play with other kids. She needs to be outside in the fresh air, not held prisoner in here, if there’s no hope left.”

Iris had been dreading these words now for seven years, ever since Miranda was first diagnosed. Denial fought with the deep weariness inside her. She threw herself at Hector, screaming and pounding him with her fists. He caught her arms and drew her against him. Then her grief won out, and she gasped in long, anguished sobs. Hector said nothing, just held her and let her cry.

Over her shoulder, he saw one of the many computer monitors begin to blink with a flashing red light. The intercom gave a soft ping.

“Dammit,” Hector muttered. Keeping one arm around Iris, he leaned closer to the desk and tapped a small button. “Yes?”

“Dr. Griffith, a visitor leaving the hospital registered as species unknown,” announced a smooth female voice.

Hector shifted his gaze to the monitor: the storyteller and his two friends were exiting through the hospital’s main entrance.

“So, widen the search parameters,” he said.

“I did, sir—still nothing.”

Iris disentangled herself from Hector’s arms and joined the conversation. “Did you include the Outer Belt and the Klamper-Tahahiki asteroid cluster?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the voice responded.

Iris glanced at Hector. “We’ll need to run a full bio-scan, then.” She sat at the desk. “Valeria, I’m switching you over to Dr. Griffith’s terminal.”

“You don’t need to do this,” he murmured.

“Are you forgetting who designed this program?” she shot back.

“A full scan will take hours.”

“I don’t mind,” said Iris, passing her hands over the smooth desktop until the keypad emerged, glowing a soft green. She began tapping buttons, entering her security code. “It’ll give me time,” she said, not looking at Hector. “Time to… to decide.”

“All right,” he said, and since she wasn’t interested in further conversation, he left her there to complete the work in privacy.

(iii)

The Grand Foyer of the palace was an impressive place, beautiful and businesslike, like an exceptionally posh bank. Flowing water tinkled into a wide marble pool surrounded with statuary. The Varedans’ love of green, growing things extended to their interior design: Amy saw plants and small potted trees. Fresh flowers, massed by the dozen in vases and bowls, cast color onto the pale walls. People milled about, brisk and purposeful—on errands for the queen? Amy admired how people dressed: the men in loose trousers and knee-length tunics, the women in flowing robes. Most of the people wore their hair long, tied back in a single plait, though some of the older Varedans had cropped their hair short. Amy saw a lot of colorful jewelry on both genders.

A functionary was trying to be shirty with the Doctor. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said in a snide tone. “The Lady Bianca is quite busy—you can’t just walk into the palace and request an audience with her.”

“Dr. Griffith sent us over,” the Doctor said, giving the woman his most winning smile. “And Iris Escalus told us to ask for her mother.”

The functionary wavered; she looked like she didn’t believe this, but the Doctor’s smile and endearing young face won her over; also, the names of Hector and Iris seemed to carry some weight. With a sigh, the woman stepped back from her desk and spoke into a device on her wrist, her voice a quiet, deferential murmur. A moment later, she said, “Please have a seat. The Lady Bianca will be down in a moment.”

The three travelers took a seat on a smooth marble bench. “What do you think River wants?” Amy asked under her breath. “It doesn’t look like anything weird’s going on.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” the Doctor murmured back.

Less than ten minutes later, a small woman whirled into the foyer. The azure of her robe matched her eyes, and her silver hair was cropped very short. A pair of beautiful earrings in gold filigree brushed her shoulders, and her nose was pierced with a tiny blue stone. Amy and Rory could see in her face the flawless bone structure shared by her daughter and granddaughter. Like Iris, Lady Bianca was a lovely woman.

“Doctor?” she asked.

The Time Lord stood, offering a hand. “Lady Bianca?”

“So pleased to meet you all.” Lady Bianca shook hands with Amy and Rory. “Professor Song said she’s expecting you, but that you’d be arriving in a… a blue box, she said.”

“It’s in the children’s ward at the hospital,” the Doctor said. “Could someone perhaps bring it over here for me? Stow it somewhere safe?”

“Very good,” the woman smiled. “Come with me—we can take the royal tram to the dig site.”

“So, what’s River up to?” asked the Doctor as Lady Bianca led them through corridors and passageways.

“Professor Song’s been working for nearly two years on behalf of the royal family,” Lady Bianca said. “She’s excavating the Seventeenth Great Temple, one of the wonders of Vareda. It’s taken almost three decades, and Professor Song came on board to oversee the opening of the innermost chamber. She’s catalogued all the artifacts they’ve found so far for the Royal Museum, quite a job, as you can imagine.”

“Are there any problems?” the Doctor asked.

“What kind of problems?”

“Did she say she’d found anything odd, anything she couldn’t understand?”

“No.” Lady Bianca looked puzzled. “Why—did she indicate to you she was having troubles of some kind?”

“Aah, this must be the royal tram!” the Doctor exclaimed, ignoring Lady Bianca’s question. “Look at that! Lovely! It’s so… so tram-y.”

They’d descended to a lower level, where one of those electric trains waited on a platform. A male guard in a tunic and trousers stood at attention as Lady Bianca swept into the car with her guests.

“Take us to the dig site,” she ordered.

“Yes, Ma’am,” the guard responded, closing the doors and taking the controls of the vehicle. Inside, the seats were plush, upholstered in deep green velvet.

“Anything to eat?” asked Lady Bianca. “We’ll be close to half an hour getting there.”

“Please and thank you,” said Rory.

“Is there a loo?” asked Amy.

Lady Bianca pointed to the rear of the car. “Right there.”

A female attendant brought out trays of food—real food, too, some kind of small bird, roasted and stuffed with a mixture of grains and nuts, and glazed with a sauce both pungent and sweet. The utensils presented a challenge: long, funny-looking things. Rory noted with some disgruntlement that the Doctor handled his odd two-pronged fork and strangely-shaped knife with fluid expertise; Rory and Amy did their best to copy him. Accompanying the meal was a mixture of roasted vegetables, crunchy and tart, and a delicious white wine. For dessert, there was bread and soft cheese.

“That was amazing,” Rory said, too full to take another bite.

“The royal chef prepares all the food for the tram,” Lady Bianca smiled.

Outside the windows, scenery had been blurring past at an unfathomable speed as the tram whipped over the grasslands on an elevated track. Great flocks of birds would fly up, startled, and a moment later they’d be black specks in the distance. Once, Rory caught a glimpse of a herd of fantastic-looking horned animals, something between a giraffe and a giant horse, but the tram went past the herd so quickly that the creatures were out of sight before Rory’s mouth could even form a question. He hoped there would be time later to ask River about the planet’s fauna.

“So, where’s this temple?” asked Amy.

“Outside the city, on the savanna, near the site of an old Moschatan settlement,” said Lady Bianca.

“The what?” said Amy.

“The Moschata,” said Lady Bianca. “They were the original inhabitants of Vareda—all the Great Temples were built by them, centuries before the Mollisians arrived.”

“And where’d _they_ come from?” Amy pressed.

“Mollis—a planet over five million light years from here.”

“Why’d they leave?” asked Rory.

“The sun of Mollis was growing old,” the Doctor provided. He’d been looking out the windows, but now he turned his attention back to his friends. “Within another few generations, maybe two thousand years, it would go supernova. The Mollisians had already escaped from Earth, and they fled to the nearest habitable planet—Vareda.”

“Escaped from Earth?” asked Amy, fascinated.

“Remember the Starship UK?”

“How could I forget?” Amy laughed. She squeezed Rory’s arm. “You missed that one.”

“They were colonists from the first wave that left Earth because of the solar flares,” the Doctor went on. “Starship EU, with quite a lot of Russia and a bit of north Africa in the mix, the greatest of the Earth starships.”

“They really were a long way from home,” said Amy.

Rory frowned, “So what happened to the Moschatans when the Mollisians arrived?”

A painful, embarrassed silence descended over the tram car. The Doctor returned his gaze to the green blur outside the window.

After a few moments, Lady Bianca said, “Reparations were made after a few generations, beginning with Queen Lavinia’s great-grandmother. All Moschatan children receive a free education, right through university. A few have risen to prominent positions in government and society. The director of the temple excavation is Jacquetta-tarq-Volsica, daughter of the First Clan Elder—she’s working very closely with Professor Song on this dig. In fact, Jacquetta was the one who sought out Professor Song and recommended her for the position.”

Rory made a small noise in his throat that Amy recognized as derision. She knew what he was thinking: reparations or not, the Mollisians were clearly the ruling class of Vareda, and the native Moschatans, for all the advances they may have recently made, were no doubt second-class citizens on their own planet. Still, Rory wouldn’t openly criticize the Mollisians; God only knew, Earth didn’t have a stellar record when it came to the treatment of indigenous peoples. There wasn’t anything Amy or Rory could say without looking like the worst kind of hypocrite.

The tram had begun to slow. Lady Bianca stood, smiling, her body language and expression indicating the unpleasant matter was no longer open for discussion.

“We’re almost there,” she said. “Look—you can see the temple.”

As the tram rounded its final loop, circling the flank of a hillside, the temple came into view. Amy’s jaw dropped.

“It’s _huge_!” she breathed.

“My God!” Rory added.

“Isn’t it marvelous?” Lady Bianca beamed. “Wait ‘till you see it up close.”

The tram had pulled into a small town of sorts, incongruously high-tech out here on the open plains.

“Township Seventeen,” Lady Bianca said as the doors swooshed apart. “Established to support the work of the dig. And look, Professor Song is waiting.”

(iv)

“Hello, sweetie. You took your time.”

“Hi, River!” Amy said, springing across the platform to hug the older woman. River looked like a female Indiana Jones in her khaki trousers, short-sleeved shirt, and multi-pocketed vest. She wore dusty work boots, and her mane of unruly curls was pulled back into a tail. Her face, neck, and arms were tanned a deep bronze.

“How are you, Amy?” River smiled.

“Great! You?”

“Always happy to be working on a dig. And hello, Rory.”

“Hey,” he said, leaning down to give the archeologist an awkward peck on the cheek.

“What about you?” River teased the Doctor. “No hugs or kisses for me?”

The Doctor leaned toward her, but instead of kissing her, asked quietly, “What’s all this about, then?”

“Come and see.” River took the Doctor’s arm, steering him out of the station and into the town. Amy and Rory followed behind, with Lady Bianca bringing up the rear.

The walls of the temple towered over the small buildings of the town, and when the travelers left the main thoroughfare, the looming shape of the limestone walls lay in full view. Amy felt tiny, like an ant.

“How’d they _do_ all this?” Rory asked.

“Muscle,” River said. “Human muscle. It took hundreds of years.” She was still arm-in-arm with the Doctor, Amy noted. “The Moschatans never domesticated animals, and they’d only invented the wheel a couple of centuries before the first temple was built.”

As they approached, the temple seemed to rear up even higher, until Amy thought she’d twist her neck trying to take it in.

River had shifted into full professorial mode. “All the Great Temples of the Moschatans fell into ruin when the Mollisians colonized the planet,” she said. “It’s only been in the past two or three generations that the temples have been excavated. This was the last temple to be built, and some artifacts found at the other sites suggest the Moschatans sealed something valuable in here.”

“Cool,” said Amy. “Buried treasure?”

“We’re hoping for something a little more interesting,” River said. “Interesting to academics, anyway. Carvings on the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Temples refer obliquely to something called ‘the Codex of the Final Days,’ as near as we can translate. If so, it would be an amazing discovery—the Moschatans didn’t leave any written documents, and it’s only through the temple carvings that we know they’d even developed symbolic language.”

“Final days?” said Amy, latching on to the bit that most interested her. “A doomsday prophecy? Love those.”

They were following a path in the shade of the great wall as it curved around, and without warning, another wall appeared in front of them. River veered over to the right. Amy saw it was a stone corridor, leading into the temple itself.

“The temples were all built around the same plan: three concentric rings of walls, enclosing an inner sanctum,” River said. “Come on.” She lightly hopped down five steps into the stone tunnel. “This leads to the outer ring, called the Circle of the Stars.”

Amy didn’t see how River had been able to work here for two years: she felt suffocated and claustrophobic from the moment she crossed the threshold. The wooden roof over the tunnel, the deep trench of the floor, and the lack of daylight made Amy feel buried alive.   She tightened her grip on Rory’s hand, and they passed from the entry corridor into the temple itself.

Inside the first ring, the travelers saw nothing except the packed dirt floor and the dun-colored bricks of the temple walls. Rory gave the bricks a closer look, noting that they’d been stacked tightly together without any kind of mortar. At evenly spaced intervals rose massive pillars, each created from a single slab of limestone and carved with menacing glyphs: sinister renditions of birds, plants, and animals, as well as strange geometric figures. The inner and outer walls were spaced widely enough apart for six people to walk comfortably abreast. At least here there was no roof, but the walls were so high that the sky looked as far away as a distant mirage. The sun was almost directly overhead, but the narrow bands of shadow at the base of the temple walls looked to Amy like wells of darkness. She would hate to be in here after nightfall.

“The temple is aligned along the Varedan zodiac,” River said. “There are twenty-four pillars in the outer wall, corresponding with the zodiac signs: four signs each of trees, flowers, gemstones, land animals, sea animals, and birds. Each year corresponds to a different sign. The Varedan new year begins the day after midsummer, when the days first begin to shorten. At midsummer, the sun is directly overhead most of the day, and the temple casts no shadow for three hours at mid-day. This year is special to the Varedans: it’s the Year of the Palamon, the royal tree. Now—sweetie, what are you _doing_?”

The Doctor had been quietly sonicing the walls and looking at the readings, then leaning closer to sniff the stone, finally giving the rough surface of one supporting pillar a lick with his tongue.

“That’s more attention than I’ve had lately,” River said to no-one in particular.

“Traces of silica,” the Doctor announced. “Forced out of the planet’s core at high pressure and temperature, probably forty or fifty million years ago, then cooled and worn down by…” He trailed off; River had folded her arms and stood tapping the toe of one foot.

“Zodiac!” the Doctor smiled brightly, tucking away the sonic screwdriver. “You know, on Lebrexius Minor, I’m considered born under the sign of the lesser spotted barrow-fish, which Lebrexians say is especially good for someone who travels a lot. It’s because the fish have a migratory…” He trailed off again at River’s long-suffering sigh. “Back to you, Professor Song.”

“The limestone was brought in from a quarry two miles from here,” River said, resuming her interrupted lecture. “The Moschatans carved the pillars at the quarry and rolled them here on logs.”

“That must’ve taken work,” Rory said. “I don’t think we saw one tree on our way here.”

“Good eyes,” River praised. “The trees came by caravan from the forests in south Fleance—we’ve calculated it took the Moschatans the better part of a year to get the logs here, before they even started to quarry the stone.”

“Wow,” said Amy. “Why?”

“Why build Stonehenge?” River responded. “It’s an observatory, perfectly aligned to the movements of Stellata, the sun of Vareda, and to its two moons—now called Mollis and Moschata—as well as the constellations of the zodiac. The pillars on the outer walls are aligned to the stars; the two pillars on the second wall are aligned to the moons, and the inner sanctum is aligned with the sun. The very center of the temple is directly beneath the sun at noon on midsummer’s day, which is why we’re opening it tomorrow.”

Amy turned, gazing up and around. “Crazy,” she muttered.

“It had religious significance, then, as well as scientific,” River said. “Stellata was worshipped as a god. The two moons were his wives, and the stars were considered their children. Come on,” she said leading them through an archway into the next ring. “This is the Lunar Circle, or the Goddess Ring, depending how you translate the ancient Moschatan glyphs.”

Despite Amy’s claustrophobia, she thought she’d never seen River so _happy_. This was what she liked best, Amy realized—excavating temples and tombs, discovering ancient things.

“So, what exactly would people do here?” Amy asked, trying to keep her disquiet at bay.

“Most people would circumambulate the outer circle and make requests of the minor deities,” River explained. “Only the clan leaders of the Moschata were able to enter the Lunar Circle, and only the high priests could enter the Altar of the Sun.”

“Which is what we’re opening tomorrow,” a new voice chimed in.   Around the corner loped a tall woman of middle years, dressed much the same as River. Her hair, graying blonde, was tied back in an untidy single plait. Her face was weather-beaten and good-natured, crinkly with laughter lines. Over her eyebrows were the same type of spots Amy and Rory had noted on the nurse in the children’s ward: three over each eyebrow, brown in color. Amy remembered that the spots on the nurse had been amber-colored, and she wondered if they grew darker with age.

River said, “Amy, Rory, Doctor, this is the excavation director, Professor Jacquetta-tarq-Volsica of Royal Vareda University. Jacquetta, these are friends of mine: Amy Pond, Rory Williams, and the Doctor.”

“It’s good to meet River’s friends at last,” Professor tarq-Volsica said, shaking their hands. “So River’s been showing you around? Have you come for the big event tomorrow?”

“Big event?” the Doctor said, rolling up onto the balls of his feet.

Lady Bianca, who’d been quiet until now said, “Tomorrow is Midsummer, our most important festival day. There’s a party hosted by Queen Lavinia tonight—a feast and a fancy dress ball.”

“You’re all invited, of course,” River smiled. “The theme is eighteenth century Earth.”

“Sounds like fun,” Amy said. “There must be some eighteenth century gear in the TARDIS wardrobe, right?”

“Actually, I’ve had some things made for you,” River answered.

Lady Bianca added, “You’ll be guests of Queen Lavinia—we’ve prepared rooms for you in the palace.”

“First class,” Amy said, treating Rory to a smoldering look. He gave her a dopey grin in return.

Lady Bianca said, “The party isn’t just to celebrate the temple opening. Tomorrow is also the twentieth birthday and coming-of-age of Prince Lambert, Queen Lavinia’s son and heir.”

Professor tarq-Volsica said, “By Moschatan standards, Prince Lambert is doubly blessed to have his birthday at the new year, and to come of age in the Year of the Palamon.”

Rory was looking at the two massive pillars, not really interested in Varedan astrology. “So, this is the Lunar Circle?” he asked.

Professor tarq-Volsica came to his side. “When there’s a double lunar eclipse, these pillars line up directly with the moons. Stand over here and you’ll see how it would’ve looked—”

With his two young companions occupied, the Doctor steered River by the elbow until they rounded the inner wall. Here, an elaborately ornamented stone door marked the entrance to the Altar of the Sun.

“Look at these carvings,” River began, but the Doctor cut her off.

“You know what happens in a couple of days,” he said, keeping his voice very low.

“Yes, obviously,” River murmured. “I’ve taken the precaution of having my fee deposited in a bank off-world, and saved my files to my home network.”

In a whisper, he said, “Is that why you sent for me?” Breathing in her ear, he asked, “Was that you, you naughty girl?”

River stifled a giggle and said, “No, it’s not me. I’m not even sure what caused the disaster—what will cause it—but I’ll be off-world by then. My official last day is tomorrow. I’m leaving tomorrow night. The day after midsummer is Volcano Day—New Year’s Day, for them. I’m not interested in staying around to learn what really happens.”

“So, why did you send for me?” the Doctor pressed. “I assume this is important—the last three times, you asked me if we’d done Vareda yet.”

“There’s a party tonight,” River said. “I need a date.”

He stared at her, their faces very close.

“A date?” he repeated. “You brought me all the way here because you need a _date_?”

“Yes, a date.” River ran her fingertip lightly down the side of his face. “I have it on good authority I should compliment your cheekbones.”

“My cheek—oh.” The Doctor stared at her. “Cheekbones?” he stuttered, then wheezed, “Seriously?”

“Very serious,” River smiled.

“Oh.” The Doctor touched his face, looking scared and excited and flummoxed, all at once. “Who told you that?”

River put a hushing finger to her lips. “Spoilers.”

“Oi, what’re you two up to, snogging in a corner?” Amy asked. She and Rory came around the corner, Professor tarq-Volsica and Lady Bianca in tow.

“This is the Solar Door,” River said innocently. “The Doctor’s reading the glyphs.”

Amy said, “Funny, I don’t see any glyphs on your face.”

“Amy,” Rory said under his breath. He asked, “So this is the door to the inner chamber? What’re all these carvings?”

“Moschatan glyphs,” said Professor tarq-Volsica, running a proud hand over the doorframe. “It’s basically a warning for anyone but a high priest to keep out. You find these in all the temples.”

“So, can we go in there?” asked Rory. “Is that all right?”

“Of course,” Professor tarq-Volsica said with a shrug. “The Moschatan faith hasn’t been practiced for centuries—nobody observes the old taboos any more. All the solar chambers in the other temples have been opened and cataloged.”

“What’d they find?” asked Rory.

“Offerings,” Professor tarq-Volsica told him. “People would leave gifts at the base of the pillars. So far, we’ve found pottery fragments, dried flowers, stalks of wild grains, things like that, in the Circle of the Stars. In the Lunar Circle, we’ve found animal pelts, sometimes bird feathers. In the Altar of the Sun, there were animal sacrifices.”

“Not human?” asked Rory.

“No—not in any of the first sixteen temples,” Professor tarq-Volsica said. “As far as anyone knows, the Moschata never practiced human sacrifice.” With a little laugh, she added, “Of course that could all change, depending on what we find in here tomorrow.” She tapped the doorframe with her fingertips.

Amy was stricken with an irrational terror, that they’d open the great door tomorrow and find the mummified remains of some ancient Moschatan on top of the altar. She swallowed hard, wondering if there was any way she could get out of attending the ceremony.

“How do you get inside?” asked Rory, studying the doorframe. He ran a hand down the rough limestone of the door, and Amy wanted to scream at him to stop.

“That’s easy,” River said. “The roof is a stone slab, and we have a crane to lift it off. Once that’s removed, I’ll climb over the wall and open the door from the inside.”

“How’d they open it back then?” Rory asked.

“They were never meant to be re-opened,” Professor tarq-Volsica provided. “Each temple would be used until the next solar eclipse, and then it would be sealed, and the next one built. So there was always a temple being built somewhere—with two moons, the planet has frequent eclipses, so the next temple was constantly under construction.”

“Seriously?” said Amy. “Didn’t they ever get tired of building temples?”

The Doctor said, “Do humans on Earth ever get tired of building churches?”

“But we don’t stop using a church just cos we built another one,” Amy argued.

Rory said, “So, did the Moschatans just decide out of nowhere to start building these huge monuments? Had they developed a new religion, or something?”

Before River or Professor tarq-Volsica could answer, the Doctor said, “What’s wrong, Amelia?”

“Nothing,” Amy said, trying to sound normal.

“You’re hugging yourself,” he said.

“Just chilly,” said Amy, dropping her arms to her sides.

The Doctor’s head was weaving back and forth as he looked into her eyes. Amy hated when he did that; it always felt like he could see right into her mind.

“You’re white,” said Rory.

“I’m a redhead; I’m always white,” Amy shot back.

River said, “You are pale, though—is everything all right?”

“It’s nothing; I’m fine,” Amy lied.

“Amy, if something’s wrong, just say so,” Rory said gently.

“All right, all right!” Amy burst out. “It just feels weird in here, okay?”

“Weird, how?” Rory seemed genuinely baffled.

“I don’t know—weird, creepy, strange.” Amy looked up at the walls, at the sun blazing overhead, seeming to cast no warmth at all. “I just don’t have a good feeling about this place.”

The Doctor didn’t respond at first. With the sonic screwdriver, he traced an outline of the door, checking the readings when he was done.

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m not picking up anything unusual.”

“So why would I feel like this?” asked Amy.

“Claustrophobia,” River suggested. “Some of our workers have had to quit the dig because they felt like they couldn’t breathe.”

Amy didn’t feel so stupid, and she gave River a grateful look.

“All right, back to the city, then,” the Doctor said. “Unless there’s more to see…?” His eyes questioned River’s.

“No, this is pretty much it,” River said. “If you’d like to look at the artifacts we’ve found, they’re on display in the royal museum.”

“Would you like a tour?” asked Lady Bianca. “And then we’ll get you settled in your quarters. You’ll probably want to rest and wash before the festivities tonight.”

“Thank you,” said Amy fervently. She started for the exit before any of the others could change their minds. To her vast relief, Rory, River, and the Doctor came along without argument. For the rest of the day, she could see that doorway in her mind: hulking, gray, and ominous, like the silent keeper of some dreadful secret.

(v)

After lunch, later in the afternoon, Hector went back to the children’s ward to check on Miranda. She was in bed, her IV line connected, sleeping peacefully, the drugs assuring her a deep slumber. She slept away most of the days now, only waking a few hours for storytelling and the bits of semi-solid food she could still keep down. Hector longed to disconnect her from the intrusive tangle of lines, to let her live the rest of her small life in what comfort could be given to her, then to let her go to whatever there was to go on to.

He dropped into a chair beside Miranda’s bed. For five years now, she’d been his special case, his patient, his project, his consuming obsession. Every moment of his waking and dreaming hours was dedicated to this, to saving the child of the woman he loved.

He stared down at his hands, large and capable, the fingers long and sensitive. His palms and nailbeds were pink, a contrast with his dark skin. Through his veins, blood pulsed on its way into and out of his heart and lungs. Everything worked the way it was supposed to. Why was he healthy and strong, thriving, while this child had fallen prey to such a sadistic killer? If Hector could have given any organ, any tissue from his own body to assure Miranda’s health and longevity, he’d have done so, gladly. Sometimes he thought he would have given his very life, if it meant Miranda could walk another day in Vareda’s green and splendid world.

He stirred from his reverie at the sound of footsteps. He would have recognized that quick, light tread anywhere. He looked up as Iris entered the room. She carried her small computer, her face ablaze with excitement and, for the first time in years, hope.

“Hector,” she whispered, “look at this.”

He took the computer from Iris and looked at the report from the bio-scan she’d been running. For a moment, the full impact of what he was reading didn’t quite sink in, but then Hector felt his pulse jump.

“This isn’t possible,” he stated. “It’s just… the entire species was wiped out, thousands of years ago.”

“He must be a survivor,” said Iris. “Maybe the only one.”

Hector gazed down at the scan results, which indicated that the storyteller who called himself the Doctor was a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey. But the Time Lords had been extinct since a cataclysmic war that had destroyed their planet; anyone who’d studied galactic history knew that. And yet, here was a newcomer to the planet whose bio-data perfectly matched the species profile that had been dredged up from the vast intergalactic databank. The research arm of the Shadow Proclamation maintained that information, and Hector didn’t think they’d be wrong about something like this.

“How did he get here?” asked Hector. “Which spaceport did he come through?”

“We were waiting for the storyteller, and this tall blue box materialized, as if it’d been teleported. He and his friends came out of the box. Now that I think about it, it was too slow and too noisy to be teleportation.”

“Besides, there’s no transmat module in the children’s playroom,” Hector frowned.

Iris said sheepishly, “I thought maybe someone from Administration or Technical Services had set up a temporary hub, so the storyteller’s entrance would be more dramatic.”

“The Time Lords had ships that could go anywhere in time and space,” Hector said. He’d been an enthusiastic student of history before focusing his intellectual energies on medicine, and the Time Lords in particular had fascinated him. “The blue box must be a disguise for his ship.”

“Think what this means,” said Iris. “He can travel anywhere, to any point in the past—or future, to any part of the universe.” She clutched Hector’s arm. “He could take Miranda somewhere they’ve developed a cure!”

Hector’s thoughts had gone along the same lines, but he tried not to let himself feel foolish optimism; after all, it was possible that no cure existed anywhere for Miranda’s illness.

“Please, Hector,” said Iris. “Please, just ask him.”

“All right,” he relented. “But Iris—whatever he says, we have to respect his decision. It’s his ship, and he might have very good reasons for not wanting to take Miranda off-world.”

“She’s a dying child!” said Iris, as though that one fact trumped any other possible consideration. “How could he refuse?”

“Iris, please don’t pin all your hopes on this man. We have no idea what he can and can’t do; we don’t know his personality or disposition; we don’t know how he’ll react to a request like this. Please promise me that whatever he says, you’ll accept it.”

Iris gave him a long, hard glare, her normally warm eyes cold with anger and defiance. She was a strong, proud, intelligent woman, and she disliked being thwarted. But at last she saw the logic in Hector’s words, and with a curt nod, she relented.

“All right,” she said.

“He’s a guest of Professor Song’s,” Hector said, “which probably means he’s here for the opening of the temple tomorrow. So I imagine he’ll be at the party tonight. I’ll try to talk to him then.”

“Good.” Iris gave Hector a quick kiss of thanks, then went to fuss over Miranda. Hector tried to quell a sense of uneasiness that had begun to gnaw away at his insides, and he hoped that they weren’t doing something he would later come to bitterly regret.

**To be continued…**

 


	3. What A Fool Believes--Chapter Two

_Chapter Two_

Museums had always bored Amy half to death; the only ones she really liked were those full of colorful artwork. The Royal Museum of Vareda, attached to the palace, was even more tedious because nothing in it held any significance to her, just a collection of artifacts from the planet’s history, a cultural past that Amy didn’t share.

Rory showed more interest, especially of the things River had found at the dig, and he questioned her about the state of the Moschatans’ technology. In between yawns, Amy learned that the Moschatans had discovered the uses of fire and had invented the wheel; they’d hunted with bow and arrow and spear-thrower. At the time of the Mollisian conquest—River didn’t mince words—they’d progressed from flint to metal. River showed off collections of axe-heads and arrow-tips, and Amy stumbled along, trying to look like she cared. By the time they reached a case full of hunting knives—River called them “almost a hybrid of a Nepalese kukri and a Latin American machete”—Amy gave up all efforts at pretending.

“I’m _really_ tired,” she said.

With a sympathetic smile, River said, “I sometimes forget most people don’t care about ancient artifacts.”

Rory said, “I think they’re incredible.” He was rubbing his forehead, as if trying to remember something. “I think I might’ve once had a knife like that. Or maybe it was a sword.”

“This can wait for another time,” River said. “Let’s get back to the Grand Foyer and see if Lady Bianca has our rooms ready. Amy looks like she could use a nap.”

Amy didn’t miss the pointed look River gave the Doctor as she spoke, nor did she miss the flush of color that crept up the Doctor’s face, and the studious way he looked at everything except River.

(ii)

Amy turned this way and that before the full-length mirror. She bounced up and down, then leaned forward, then straightened up again and began strutting back and forth.

From the other side of the room, River’s voice floated over. “Are you _quite_ enjoying yourself?” she teased.

“Hmm,” said Amy leaning forward again. “Look at those. Who needs a Wonderbra?”

“I take it you’ve never worn a corset before.”

Amy ran her hands down the smooth stays. “I can see why women liked these things,” she said. It looked as though every bit of soft tissue on her ribcage had been pushed up into those two delectable half-moon curves. Amy had never looked so voluptuous in her life. “It’s kind of uncomfortable, but in a really kinky way.”

River laughed, “Just be glad you don’t have to wear one all day, every day.” Like Amy, she wore a corset over a thin silk shift, and she’d been sitting while a maid piled her hair into a dramatic upsweep, fastening the curls with jeweled clips. Amy’s hair was already done, a latticework of criss-crossing auburn braids and twists in a high beehive, a few curly wisps left to float about her face.

Another two maids entered the room, each one carrying an armful of shimmering silk.

“Which one is mine?” Amy yelped, bolting over to inspect the two gowns.

“The purple and red,” River smiled. “Do you like it?”

The maid held up the gown, and Amy stood there, stunned speechless.

“They’re on loan, so don’t get too attached to it,” River cautioned.

Amy extended a shy finger and traced the deep red frills and ruffles on the fitted, elbow-length sleeves of the dress. From each elbow, a wide bell of ivory lace fell to the wrist. The drawn-back overskirt of deep plum-colored silk revealed a petticoat in the same red as the ruffles on the sleeves. More ivory lace and gold accents on the neckline, bodice, and skirt set off the darker colors, the whole thing a fairy-tale concoction of feminine sartorial pleasure.

“Who made these?” Amy asked when she found her voice.

“The queen’s seamstress,” River said. “I gave her your measurements.”

Amy tore her eyes away from her own costume and admired River’s. The design was similar—a gown with the skirt open in front—only River’s was more tailored, the over-skirt like a peacock’s train flowing down in back, revealing quite a lot of the dove grey bodice and petticoat beneath. The fabric of the gown was in vertical stripes, dove grey and midnight blue, the sleeves more fitted, less fussy, trimmed with only a narrow edge of delicate lace. Now Amy saw why River had chosen dark blue gemstones for her hairclips and jewelry: rings, bracelets, earrings, and a choker with a pendant that drew the eye to River’s generous cleavage.

“Are those real sapphires?” asked Amy.

“No, they’re a type of quartz crystal that can only be found on Vareda,” River said. “They come in all different colors.”

Amy touched her necklace and earrings. “Like these?” River had given Amy a set that looked like amethyst, accented with tiny chips of ruby.

“Crystal, all of it,” River said.

“Is it valuable?” asked Amy, alarmed. She didn’t want to be responsible for losing any of the queen’s jewelry collection.

“Not really,” River laughed. “The most valuable crystal on Vareda is completely clear. The stones are used to conduct energy from the solar collection stations. For jewelry, though, they’d be about as interesting as glass.”

The maid with Amy’s dress beckoned to her, smiling. “Would you like to try it on?”

Amy bounced over behind the folding screen, quivering with suppressed excitement. She could hardly believe that she, ordinary Amy Pond from Leadworth, would be wearing that gown tonight, a dress that would not have looked out of place on Marie Antoinette.

_Just wait ‘till Rory sees me_ , Amy thought as the maid laced her into the frock and fastened a series of hook-and-eye closures. _And he thinks the policewoman’s outfit is dishy!_

(iii)

Rory sat in an anteroom adjacent to where he and the Doctor had been instructed to change. The Time Lord had still been behind a folding screen, muttering to himself, when Rory had finished.

With nothing else to do, Rory studied the room. Like almost everything else they’d seen of Vareda, the emphasis was on a kind of luxurious practicality. Water flowed through a small marble fountain in one corner, trickling into an oval basin. The walls had been papered with a pale fabric that looked like damask and which reflected the colors of the many flowers that had been arranged in bowls and vases throughout the room. The ceiling was high, the windows tall and uncovered, allowing plenty of daylight. The temperature was perfect, neither too warm nor too cool, the air neither too humid nor too dry. The furniture was plush, soft, comfortable to both the legs and back. The light fixtures were all of painted glass, the colors in harmony with the massed flowers. Rory couldn’t see any light switches. Did the lights come on automatically when the sun set?

The Doctor emerged from the inner room, walking with a jerky, awkward lope.

“You’ve got the breeches on backwards,” Rory said.

The Doctor glanced down, a look of comprehension crossing his face. “That explains things, then.”

“You want the opening in front… for obvious reasons,” Rory added.

“Oh. Right! Just a mo.” The Doctor darted back into the room. Rory shook his head: how could the Doctor possess such extraordinary intelligence and yet be so clueless about something so basic?

The Time Lord re-emerged, looking happier and more comfortable. Rory got to his feet.

“Well, you’re right at home,” the Doctor observed, casting a disgruntled look at his companion.

“Two centuries’ worth of experience,” Rory reminded him. “I was happy to see the end of breeches and hose, trust me. Not to mention these things.” He shifted one foot forward: the shoe was black leather, ornamented with a shiny silver buckle. The Doctor’s were identical.

The Time Lord paused before a nearby mirror, adjusting his cravat. “Is this thoroughly idiotic?”

The unexpected admission of doubt touched Rory. He knew for a fact the Doctor didn’t like to appear anything less than fully in command of every situation. Rory found it almost distressing to see him otherwise.

“No more idiotic than every other bloke’ll be tonight,” he said. “It’s just not a look that lends itself to dignity.”

“The things I do for that woman,” the Doctor said under his breath. Queen Lavinia had chosen the theme for the party, but River had selected the clothes for herself and her friends. The archeologist seemed to have enjoyed playing dress-up doll with the Doctor.

“I’m glad we’re millions of light years from Leadworth,” Rory said. “If the blokes at the pub saw me like this, I’d never live it down.” Mainly, he was relieved to see the pull River exerted over the Doctor. Even though he and Amy were married, Rory couldn’t help worrying about Amy’s interest in her childhood friend. But whatever Amy might still feel, the Doctor preferred the attentions of the older woman, for which Rory was deeply grateful.

The Doctor drew back his shoulders and took one last look in the mirror. Summoning his courage, he said, “Let’s go meet the ladies. Come along, Mr. Pond.” He strode from the room as manfully as possible, but managed only to look like a martyr on the way to his execution.

(iv)

When Rory first saw Amy, his jaw dropped, then he realized he was standing with his mouth open, and he quickly snapped it shut. For a moment, he hadn’t recognized her, a vision of almost otherworldly loveliness. Then his vision shifted, and he saw the familiar, beloved face, the abundant crimson hair.

Amy smiled widely and bobbed an untutored curtsey.

“Lord Williams?” she said, fluttering a lacy fan.

“Uh,” Rory managed.

“What do you think?” Amy demanded, twirling. The skirt of the dress, purple over red, flared out above her damask shoes.

“That—is—incredible,” Rory said. He now understood why River had chosen red for him, red with purple and gold accents. The heavy cuffs of Rory’s jacket were purple, his waistcoat was purple, but everything else was red—Roman red, surely not a coincidence. His ruffled shirt and hose were the same soft ivory as the lace on Amy’s gown. Rory glanced at River, who stood with an enormous smile on her face. He’d always thought of her primarily as an archeologist and adventurer; he’d never have imagined she possessed such artistic sense as well.

Like Amy’s and Rory’s, River’s and the Doctor’s clothes were inverse images of each other: River’s gown dove grey with dark blue accents; the Doctor in dark blue, his shirt and hose in dove grey. His gaze was fixed on River, his besotted expression making him appear impossibly young.

River then demonstrated everything there was to know of allure: she curtsied to the Doctor, fluid and graceful, her eyes flirtatious, gaze never leaving the Doctor’s face. The Doctor in his turn made an elegant bow from the waist.

“Professor Song,” he said, offering River his arm.

“Doctor,” she smiled, slipping one silk-encased arm through the Doctor’s elbow.

From deep within the palace came the musical sound of ringing bells.

“That’s the summons to dinner,” River said. She and the Doctor led the way. Amy took Rory’s arm, and they followed along behind the older couple.

(v)

When all the guests had assembled at their tables, the queen and her son made their entrance. They were both small people, Amy saw, the queen a rather stout woman of perhaps fifty-five or sixty. Iron grey curls were piled up on her head, and she wore a silver diadem set with a glittering crystal. Her gown was deep green, trimmed in gold. Queen Lavinia had a good-natured face, her coloring very pretty, and her subjects seemed at ease in her presence.

Her son, Prince Lambert, was as beautiful a young man as Amy had ever seen. Dark blond curls framed a face that made the word ‘angelic’ seem anodyne and inadequate. Prince Lambert had a complexion as smooth and golden as a peach, and when he passed close enough, Amy saw the green of his eyes. His lips were very full, almost girlish, curling up into a dimpled smile. He was slim and elegantly muscular, carrying himself with a dancer’s grace. He wore the same eighteenth century garb as the other men, white trimmed with gold—not a combination many men could have carried without looking ridiculous, but Prince Lambert managed it with effortless panache.

Everyone remained standing until the queen and the prince had taken their places at the head table. The only other people sitting with the royal pair were Lady Bianca, her daughter Iris, and Dr. Griffith from the hospital. Amy almost hadn’t recognized Lady Bianca, because she’d covered her cropped hair with a tall wig of white curls. Iris wore a gown of bronze, an unusual color that worked with her rich hair and honey-brown eyes. Dr. Griffith had chosen a suit in burgundy and charcoal, the trim cut of the clothes flattering his height and broad shoulders.

At some unspoken cue, the masses of guests turned to their right and raised their cups of wine, as if in salute to an unseen entity. Amy and Rory followed suit, and after that odd toast, the queen bade everyone welcome.

“My good friends, it’s Midsummer’s Eve!” she called out in a clear, strong voice. “Tonight, Prince Lambert comes of age, and tomorrow we open the last Altar of the Sun—the past and the future come together.” She clapped her hands twice and said, “Let us then celebrate!”

From a balcony overhead, music began playing. The guests sat, and servants appeared out of nowhere with dishes on silver trays. A happy buzz of conversation rose above the crowds.

Amy and River, like the other women, were obliged to sit very straight in their tall-backed chairs: corsets didn’t allow slouching. Amy preened with a sense of importance; their table was on the lowest level, one of maybe a dozen tables on the floor with the queen’s. Amy peered about with interest; she noticed at another table Professor tarq-Volsica from the dig. Here and there she saw other people with those three spots over their eyebrows; otherwise the Moschatans couldn’t be distinguished from the Mollisians.

From the lowest level, the floors rose up in asymmetrical layers, connected by graceful flights of steps, so that the cavernous space felt like giant symphony hall, with the queen’s table in the orchestra pit. Amy saw that the room had been arranged in such a way that Queen Lavinia would have a clear view of everything going on around her.

When a waiter had left the first course and departed, Amy murmured to River, “What was that weird salute thing?”

“It’s a tribute to Earth,” River explained. “The ancestral home of the Mollisians. They’ve never forgotten that Earth is where they came from.”

“So, why’d we all turn right?”

“At this time of year and at this time of day, that’s approximately the direction Earth would be—it changes as the planet moves, obviously.”

The first course was some type of fruit, cut into tiny pieces, and glazed over with a hard crust of sugar, almost like crème brûlée.

“Dessert first,” Rory commented.

Each place had been set with a dozen utensils. Rory and Amy followed River’s and the Doctor’s lead, selecting their smallest two-pronged fork to break the sugary crust and eat the bits of fruit one piece at a time. The flavor reminded Amy of mangoes.

“Pace yourselves,” River cautioned. “It’s a full Mollisian banquet—twenty courses.”

Rory asked, “Why’s that lot—” he shrugged subtly toward Queen Lavinia’s table—“sitting with Their Highnesses?”

River said, “Lady Bianca is the queen’s chief steward, a position that’s been passed down through the Escalus family, from mother to daughter, since the planet was colonized. She has a lot of influence in her own right—both with Queen Lavinia and with the people. Dr. Griffith is there because he and Iris are lovers. He’s also the Chief Officer of the hospital—some people gossip he only got the position because of Iris.”

“Did he?” asked Amy.

River smiled, “Gossips usually don’t check their dates. He started working at Royal Hospital, and that was how he met Iris—not the other way around.”

“Does she work there, too?” asked Rory.

“She’s the Director of Security,” River said. “She won’t take over as steward until her mother dies or is too old to keep working. Right now, Iris is on a leave from her job because her daughter’s so sick.”

“So, stewards have normal jobs before they become stewards?” Amy asked.

“Oh, yes,” River said. “They typically become stewards in middle age. Lady Bianca was Director of the Archives in the Royal Museum until her own mother died. The Escalus women earn the title ‘Lady’ when they enter the queen’s service.”

Amy said, “So what happens if Miranda… if she can’t be cured? Does Iris have other kids who could inherit the steward’s job?”

“No, Miranda’s the only one,” said River.

“That’s really sad,” Amy said.

“What happens to the position, then?” asked Rory.

“It would go to one of Lady Bianca’s second or third cousins, the descendants of her grandmother’s sister.” A waiter came by to clear the fruit dishes and set out small plates of something that looked like caramelized figs. River waited until the servant had departed before she said, “It’s a blow to the family to know the line of stewards will probably end with Iris.”

Rory had started to pick up one of the figs with his fingers, but he stopped short at a warning look from River. She used a single-pronged skewer to show him how to spear the dried fruit and lift it to the mouth.

“Never eat with your hands,” she said. “It’s considered incredibly gauche, especially in the royal banquet hall.”

“What are these?” asked Rory, after he’d carefully chewed and swallowed one of the things. “They’re not bad.”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Sure,” said Rory.

“They’re a type of newt.”

Amy gagged and almost spit hers out. “Eew,” she said, gulping down a mouthful of wine. “Warn me next time!”

Rory reached for another one. At Amy’s look, he said, “We used to eat mice in Rome.”

“When we go back to Leadworth, you are _not_ choosing the menu, okay?”

Rory gave her an adoring expression with big calf eyes. “Okay.

(vi)

Hector gauged the mood of the party carefully. He wanted to wait until Professor Song’s guests had consumed enough food and wine to relax them, but he didn’t want to wait so long that they would be tired and irritable—or eager to get away and pursue more personal pleasures.

The relationship among the archeologist’s three guests puzzled him. The young human couple were obviously lovers, if not married, based on their posture, their behavior with each other, and their facial expressions. Professor Song’s relationship with the Time Lord was more difficult to gauge. Hector could detect intimacy between them, a sense of familiarity, and they’d bantered and flirted all throughout dinner. But Hector also sensed caution, wariness, and most of it was on the Time Lord’s part; he seemed to have his guard up. Lovers or not, the relationship between the two struck Hector as complicated.

Following the extensive feast, the guests had a quarter-hour to themselves, which most used to visit bathrooms or walk off their heavy meals in the cool evening air. In the throng, Hector lost sight of the Time Lord. _Patience_ , he chided himself, and accompanied Iris and Lady Bianca to the ballroom.

Hector hadn’t had occasion to be in the royal ballroom for over a year; at the last two grand functions, he’d been too absorbed with Miranda’s treatment to leave the hospital. Now he marveled anew at the gleaming blond parquet of the floor, the tall windows that opened out onto the palace gardens and patios, the multitude of tiny crystal light fixtures. One end of the ballroom opened right out into a sheltered grotto, water flowing down an artificial stone fall and into basins that were illuminated from within, causing the entire grotto to be filled with shimmering blue-green ripples. Varedans loved to decorate with light and water.

In keeping with the Year of the Palamon, saplings of the tree had been placed in pots around the perimeter of the ballroom; they’d been raised in a hothouse and forced into early flower, so that each young tree bore clusters of white and gold blossoms, the heady fragrance perfuming the air. After this party, Prince Lambert would decide where he wanted the saplings planted, and they’d grow as the rest of the city’s trees grew, limbs pruned until that glorious leafy canopy spread its shade over everything around it.

At dinner, an octet of musicians playing stringed and wood-wind instruments had provided accompaniment. Now, a full orchestra tuned up in a recessed balcony overlooking the ballroom. Hector strode around the room, hands clasped behind his back, nodding and smiling at people he knew. He marveled, not for the first time, at how very fortunate he’d been to be born on Vareda, to live on possibly the most prosperous and civilized planet in the cosmos. Centuries of enlightened leadership and forward-thinking social policies had made Vareda the envy of many other worlds. Vareda had avoided armed conflict and environmental degradation, marshalling its resources with uncommon prudence and wisdom. As a result, the people enjoyed an unparalleled standard of living, devoting their energies to medicine, to technological innovation, to learning and the arts. The great libraries and museums of Vareda had achieved an extraordinary level of renown.

Hector often traveled off-world as a consultant to leaders of other planets, to help them resolve their problems, and it never failed to dismay him that otherwise intelligent beings could be so foolish: waging petty internecine warfare among themselves; fouling the very environments they needed for food, air, and water; breeding until their planets’ resources reached the breaking point; allowing greed, strife, and corruption to run rampant. Not that Vareda’s history was completely unstained: the massacre of the Moschatans by the colonizing Mollisians remained a dark, shameful chapter in the planet’s history. But even there, the Mollisians had made amends as best they could. Hector’s great wish was for the two peoples of his world to think of themselves neither as Mollisians nor as Moschatans, but only as Varedans, one people united beneath the palamon tree.

“Have you spoken to him yet?” Iris returned to Hector’s side, slipping her arm through his elbow. Despite the toll that the years of anxiety and stress had taken on her, she had never seemed so lovely. Hector marveled at her warm eyes, the red-brown gloss of her hair, the way the bronze of her dress brought out the ivory of her skin. How he longed to see her wide mouth open into its dazzling smile, to hear again the sound of her rollicking, exuberant laughter.

“Not yet,” Hector said. “I don’t want to approach him until the time feels right.”

“Don’t wait too long,” Iris entreated him.

“No, but I don’t want to catch him off-guard, either, and have him refuse us because he’s feeling irritated and put-upon.”

Iris nodded, but Hector could sense her impatience, her frantic urgency. Her full lips tightened into a hard line, and Hector’s heart sank. Miranda was declining—they both knew it. Their sole hope lay in the hands of that unknown stranger.

(vii)

“A waltz,” said Rory. “Millions of light years from earth, thousands of years into the future, and they’re playing a waltz.”

“The refugees from Europe took their music right along with them,” the Doctor said.

Dozens of couples had shifted onto the dance floor, drawn into the irresistible rhythm of a spirited three-step. Rory found himself unconsciously tapping one foot; he tried to stop, but his leg seemed to have developed a will of its own. He peered through the crowds, looking for Amy.

“Where are they?” he grumbled. “How long does it take two women to visit the loo?”

“In those skirts? No telling,” the Doctor said.

“And this from a bloke who couldn’t figure out which way to wear his trousers,” Rory snorted.

The Doctor didn’t respond, his gaze fixed on something in the distance. Rory saw that it was River, gliding across the parquet, Amy trailing along behind her.

“Shall we?” River offered an arm to the Doctor.

“My pleasure,” he said, putting a hand on her waist and one on her shoulder. They twirled off into the crowd. Rory frowned, folding his arms; he still remembered how the Doctor had looked dancing at his and Amy’s wedding reception. “Drunken giraffe,” Amy had said at the time, but clearly the Doctor had learned how to waltz somewhere. He might not be an image of grace, but out there on the floor with River in his arms, he appeared relaxed and assured.

“Oi, do I get a dance?”

“Sorry, sorry,” Rory said, taking Amy’s hand. They’d taken a couple of dance classes prior to their wedding, little more than a crash-course, but they’d mastered the basics of a decent waltz. Muscle memory came back, reminding Rory that he and Amy hadn’t actually been married for very long. How long had it been—two weeks, three? A month? The Doctor had promised to return them to Leadworth at a time when nobody would notice how long they’d been gone, but Rory nevertheless worried how they would be able to resume their interrupted lives after so much gallivanting through time and space. Still, how could he refuse Amy’s wishes, and how could he deny himself the adventure of a lifetime?

As they circled around the vast dance floor, Amy said, “So, d’you think they’re shagging yet?”

“The Doctor’s sex life is something I try not to think about,” Rory answered.

“Does he even _have_ one? I mean, he’s a bloke, isn’t he?”

“Not even going there,” Rory said.

“It must be so weird for River, every time she sees him, not knowing where they are,” Amy said. “Have they worked out some kind of code? You know, a wink means they’ve snogged, two winks means they’ve groped a bit, three winks means—”

“Amy,” Rory laughed, “leave that to them, okay?” He leaned in to kiss her. “Tonight’s just me and you, and a fabulous bed in a royal palace, and we’re not paying a single pence for any of it.”

“Hmm,” said Amy. “And you haven’t even seen what’s under this dress.”

Eyes agleam, Rory said, “Eighteenth century… I’m thinking Marguerite and the Scarlet Pimpernel.”

Amy’s brow creased. “Who and who?”

Laughing, Rory kissed her again. “Someone slept through English class.”

“It was boring.”

“The Scarlet Pimpernel’s a dashing hero in the guise of a slow-witted Englishman, and Marguerite’s his daring French wife.”

“So, what do they do?” asked Amy. “Have adventures and shag a lot?”

“Rescue people form the guillotine,” Rory told her.

“Do I need a French accent?” Amy winked.

“Only if you want,” Rory said. Amy did a surprisingly good French accent, even if it was mainly an impersonation of their primary school French teacher. Rory thought of the time Amy had burst in on him, wearing her French maid’s outfit, and had tickled him witless with her feather duster before making love to him on the narrow bed in his childhood room. The hilarious and maddening thing was that they’d had to be as quiet as possible: Rory’s father had been at home, watching a football match on the telly downstairs. Amy had gotten into the house unnoticed by picking the lock on the basement door.

Now that he thought about it, Rory reflected, Amy would make an _excellent_ Marguerite.

(viii)

“They’re so adorable,” River smiled. “There’s nothing like dewy young love, is there?”

“I wouldn’t know,” the Doctor huffed.

“Of course you would,” River teased. “You weren’t born old and grumpy, as much as you’d like everyone to think that.”

The tempo of the waltz had slowed, and their bodies—or their clothes, anyway, kept brushing together, a slithery tango of silk against silk.

The Doctor had grown aware of a slight fullness beneath his cheekbones, almost like sinus pressure, but far more pleasurable. He could stop it, if he wished; he had complete control over his biological functions—though he wished he had a better grip on his pain reflexes—but he chose instead to let it continue.

River changed the topic. “Do you know what happens here? Volcano Day? It’s less than forty-eight hours away now.”

His head shook. “I know what happens, but not why.”

“I thought if anyone knew, it’d be you.”

“Vareda’s always been too dull to bother with,” the Doctor said. “I wouldn’t have come here, except for you.”

“We haven’t had time to synch up diaries yet,” River said. “Or aren’t you bothering with a diary yet?”

He didn’t answer.

“I’ll take that as a no,” she said. “So, it’s still early days for you, then.”

“Early enough,” he said.

“Early enough for what?”

“To not know if I trust you.”

River kept her face impassive. “That’s your call, sweetie.”

“What you said at the temple today—” The Doctor touched his face. “Nobody knows about that. I never told anyone. The only other people who’d know…” He didn’t finish. In her mind, River finished the sentence for him: _only another Time Lord_. His gaze searched River’s face. Over the years, she’d learned to shield her mind, at least enough to keep him from seeing right through her. People like Amy and Rory, of course, he could read as though they were made of glass.

River had to give the Doctor a lot of credit—he’d never used his telepathic skills against her, never taken anything from her she wasn’t willing to give. River knew he would in time come to trust her, but that would take years—centuries—in his own timestream. Centuries, and at least three regenerations that River was aware of. When River had first met him, over two decades earlier, he had already trusted her without question, which had baffled her at the time. He’d been in and out of her life since then, but it was only recently that River had begun to encounter him when he barely knew her. Now the tables were turned: she expected him to trust her, and he didn’t. These times were the most frustrating, and River had to be careful, lest she reveal too much to him. There were events he’d find distressing, but he had to live through them, things had to unfold a certain way, or else entire timelines, lives, and critical events would irrevocably be altered—and not for the better.

But what she hated most was the lack of emotional intimacy, the knowledge that he had his barriers up so far that he was measuring every word he said to her. Well, with luck, tonight would remedy some of that.

The orchestra brought the waltz to a close, and everyone applauded. With a flourish of horns, the next number began.

“Oh, the Blue Danube,” River said. “My favorite.”

“Incredible,” the Doctor said, pulling her into the dance. “All those centuries and light years from where it began, and here it is, the same old waltz, perfectly replicated, note for note.”

“Are you complaining?”

The Doctor beamed at her, and River’s skin broke out in gooseflesh. “Never.”

(ix)

About ninety minutes after the dancing had begun, Professor Song slipped away from her partner and sashayed in the direction of the women’s bathroom. The Time Lord wandered into the stony grotto, vanishing among the blue-green shadows. Hector saw his chance. He leaned down to kiss Iris.

“Wish me luck,” he said.

“Good luck,” she said fervently, squeezing his hand. “I’ll be with Mother.”

Hector wove his way through the crowd to the edges of the dance floor and circled a young palamon tree. Inside the grotto was cool, humid, mossy. A pebbled pathway took him around to the back of the waterfall, into one of Queen Lavinia’s many secluded gardens. Overhead, the glass panes of the ceiling had been left open to the starlight. Deep shadows lay all about; here the music and voices from the ballroom were muted, as far away as a dream. Hector waited for his vision to adapt and proceeded at a slow pace, taking care to muffle his footsteps.

He spotted the Time Lord at last, sitting on a marble bench; his face, very pale in contrast to his hair and costume, appeared almost to float in the indigo twilight of the garden. Hector hesitated for a moment. The Doctor didn’t look like a man interested in company. Still, this chance might not present itself again.

Hector allowed one foot to crunch a bit of gravel, and the Doctor looked up, his head turning.

“It’s me,” Hector said, strolling down the path. “Lovely evening, isn’t it?”

“Dr. Griffith.”

“Yes—forgive me if I’m interrupting.” Hector took a seat on a bench opposite the Doctor. “I’ve been hoping we could have a word in private.”

The Doctor’s expression didn’t change. He made no protest, but he hardly seemed to welcome the intrusion, either.

Hector plunged on. “We learned some interesting things about you at the hospital today.”

“Oh, yes, the bio-scan,” the Doctor said. “I felt it when I went through the doorway.”

“We were quite astonished at the results,” Hector said. “It’s not every day we have a Time Lord on Vareda—let alone the last Time Lord.”

The alien still appeared impassive, but something in his face changed. His eyes were deep-set, and in the near-darkness, their expression couldn’t be read, yet Hector detected a pulse of wariness.

“We’re quite honored to have you here, Doctor,” Hector added, switching to the smooth, assured voice he used when soothing the rumpled egos of his research scientists. “And please don’t worry that I’m going to interrogate you or make your presence public. Apart from our Director of Security, I’m the only one who knows.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” the Doctor said. “Let’s keep the autograph hounds at bay.”

His tone was light, verging on jovial, and yet Hector felt the words as sharp, piercing barbs. He flexed his leg muscles to stand, but a vision of Miranda in his mind’s eye forced him back onto the bench.

“I’m sure you noticed Miranda during the storytelling,” Hector said. “The little girl in the wheelchair.”

“Of course.”

“I’m her mother’s—well, we’ve been together almost a decade now. Miranda’s not my daughter, but I’ve come to think of her as mine.” Hector said, “Doctor, is there anything that could be done for her? Not necessarily here on Vareda—perhaps on some other world, even at another time.”

“There’s nothing I can do for her. I’m sorry.”

Hector’s next couple of breaths felt tight and painful. “Nothing at all?”

The Doctor shifted, re-crossing his long legs. “Most points in time are in flux and can be changed in any number of ways. But other points are fixed, and they can’t be altered. Miranda’s death is one of those fixed points.”

“You mean—you mean she’s destined to die?”

“We all are,” the Time Lord said.

“But so soon? As a child?”

“She has very little time left,” the Doctor said. “A day or two, perhaps.”

The pain inside Hector’s chest expanded out into a crushing agony. “One or two _days_?”

“You have her records; you’ve charted the course of her illness.” The Doctor might have been talking about something as benign as the growth of the plants in Queen Lavinia’s gardens. “I could sense it when I stood next to her today. I’m sorry, Hector.”

“But how can you _tell_?” Hector demanded. “Is it—what is it—?”

The Doctor said, “I experience time differently from the way you do; I feel it differently, and fixed points are always clear.”

Hector’s chest heaved in convulsions, and he struggled to get his emotions under control. “Her mother—her poor mother—”

“Let Iris spend time with her. Make Miranda as comfortable as possible.”

“These fixed points—she’s just a child,” said Hector. “How can she be so important? Surely just this once…?”

The Doctor’s head shook back and forth. “When a fixed point is changed, the universe has an ugly way of compensating around it. I know Miranda’s death will be unbearable for the people who love her, but trying to change her death will only bring more suffering.”

Hector hauled himself to his feet. He had tried not to get his hopes too high, but now he felt cheated, cheated and enraged, that this whey-faced outsider would sit there and calmly tell him that a beautiful, innocent child had to die for some kind of cosmic greater good.

Voice hoarse and ragged, he said, “I can see you’ve never known the pain of losing a child!”

The instant the words left his mouth, Hector realized his mistake: the Doctor’s face grew as hard and still as marble, and he looked up at Hector with an expression not wrathful but _cold_ —as cold and blank and desolate as the furthest, uninhabited reaches of the universe, a hell without light or air or warmth or hope.

The Time Lord rose slowly to his feet, and though Hector topped him by four or five inches and outweighed him by thirty or forty muscular pounds, he quailed with fear. A horrible stillness flowed out from the Doctor, making Hector feel tiny, feeble, and terrified. Without words, he stepped past Hector and left the grotto. Hector listened to the sound of his quiet footsteps retreating, and then, on shaking, rubbery legs, he stumbled his way back out into the light. Avoiding the ballroom, he swerved sharply right and plunged into the men’s bathroom, where he was violently sick to his stomach.

(x)

“He said no?”

They were in a small sitting room down a corridor from the ballroom, away from the laughing crowds, the infernal rhythm of the waltzes, the revelry, the unbearable joy. Iris sat on a sofa beside her mother, clutching Lady Bianca’s hand in a death grip.

“I tried. Iris, I’m so sorry. I tried.”

“You look ill,” Lady Bianca said, leaning toward Hector with concern.

“I said something unforgivably foolish to him,” Hector blurted, his face hot with shame.

“Oh, no,” said Iris, eyes wide with dismay. “Hector—maybe if I talk to him—”

“No! I’ve made things bad enough—Iris, please don’t make this worse.”

“Did he say why?” asked Lady Bianca.

“He said Miranda… her death is a fixed point in time, and it can’t be altered.”

“Why?” Iris demanded. “She’s a child, for pity’s sake!”

“Iris, remember I asked you to accept his decision, whatever his reasons. It may seem cruel to us, but it must be some rule, some principle he’s bound to abide by.”

“Damn the rules!” Iris cried out. “My daughter is dying!”

“Iris,” Lady Bianca murmured, “I spent a while today in the archives reading about Time Lords. They considered themselves the stewards of time, and their code was never to interfere with events, throughout the universe, at every point in history.”

“They’re all dead, except for him!” spat Iris. “Who is there to stop him now?”

“Don’t say that,” Hector chided. “He still has his own conscience to be accountable to, and when it comes to matters of time—well, I’m inclined to take a Time Lord at his word that he knows what he’s talking about.”

“Some conscience!”

“It’s not for us, or anyone, to force him to alter rules he’s had to abide by his entire life,” said Hector. In spite of his own anger, his own grief, he understood at least on an intellectual level why the Doctor had refused.

“But—”

“Iris.” Lady Bianca stood, every inch a mother. “Come with me—you need to rest. After tonight, you should spend as much time with Miranda as possible. You won’t be alone—Hector and I will be there with you. You won’t have to face this by yourself.”

Iris turned her head from one side to the other, glaring first at her mother, then at her lover, her face taut with outrage and disbelief. Then she burst into a torrent of uncontrollable weeping.

“My baby—my baby!” she sobbed.

Lady Bianca held her grieving daughter, rubbing her shoulders, shooting a warning look at Hector.

“Come on,” Lady Bianca said, steering Iris out of the room. “You need something to help you sleep—you’ve worked yourself into a state these past few days.”

Hector watched them go, then leaned back in his seat. Failure—he wasn’t accustomed to it. There had been very few things in life he’d desired and had failed to achieve or acquire. Intelligence, strength, willpower, character—all had served him well. And in one thing that mattered perhaps more than all others, he’d been thwarted. He swallowed back a tide of burning gall.

Abruptly, he took his feet, unfastening his cravat with an angry jerk. He couldn’t bear this place a moment longer, the buffoonish dancers in their ridiculous costumes. He’d change into his own clothes and return to the hospital, where he could at least get some work done.

(xi)

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” the Doctor said. “Who said anything was wrong?”

“Your face,” River said, raising an eyebrow. “You might fool everyone else, but you can’t fool me, sweetie.”

“It was nothing.”

“Which means it was something, but you’re not going to talk about it.”

“Is that a problem?” he huffed.

“Only if you make it one,” she said.

The Doctor wavered, something in his face—his impossibly young face—suggesting that he badly wanted to unburden himself.

The orchestra had begun another piece of music, and the Doctor’s expression shifted back to its habitual enthusiasm and delight.

“It’s the Invitation to the Dance,” he said. “You know, I remember when _Le Spectre de la Rose_ premiered by the Ballets Russes in the Théâtre de Monte Carlo, on Earth in 1911.” He held out an arm to River. “Shall we?”

“Some day you’ll have to take me there and show me.” River allowed herself to be drawn into his arms and back onto the dance floor. The night was still young, and anyway, long experience had taught her that patient waiting was sometimes the only way to pry anything out of the Doctor.

(xii)

The ball ended shortly before midnight; the orchestra played a number everyone seemed to know, because they all sang it with drunken enthusiasm. Then Queen Lavinia, who’d been holding court in a corner while Prince Lambert danced with a veritable parade of comely women, thanked her guests and the orchestra, and then there was a dramatic countdown to midnight. Everyone cheered, and more wine flowed. The Year of the Palamon had officially begun.

“Let’s go,” Rory said to Amy, tugging her hand.

On their way out, they bumped into River and the Doctor, who were chatting with Professor tarq-Volsica.

“The last tram to the dig leaves one hour before noon,” River said. “Don’t oversleep.”

“Right back at you,” Amy winked.

Rory gave the Doctor a light punch on the shoulder. “Cheers, mate,” he said, unable to stop his mouth from twitching into a smile.

Out in the hallway, Amy giggled, “Did you see his _face_?”

“Did you see _hers_?” Rory answered.

Amy said, “Oh, to be a fly on their bedroom wall tonight.”

Rory kissed her and said, “Speaking of bedrooms…”

“How fast can the Scarlet Pimpernel run?” asked Amy.

“Depends who he’s chasing,” Rory said, wiggling his eyebrows.

Amy took off at a sprint, incredibly fast even in her Louis heels and cumbersome skirt. She glanced over her shoulder to be sure Rory was in pursuit, then tore up the marble staircase to the guest quarters, heedless of the laughter and astonished expressions she left in her wake.

(xiii)

“I have something to show you.”

“Oh?” The Doctor’s face went bright pink.

River laughed. “Not like _that_ , sweetie.” She gave him a chaste peck on one cheek. “That bit comes later. Here.” She leafed through the pages of her blue diary, extracting something near the back and handing it to the Doctor.

He stared down, paralyzed with disbelief. River knew how difficult it would be for him to accept this, but it was perhaps the best, if not only, way he would trust her—at least for this one night.

With a fingertip, he traced the Gallifreyan script on the outside of the envelope, the impression in the wax seal.

“Do you know what this says?” he asked.

“Only the outside,” she responded. “I haven’t seen what’s inside.”

He held the envelope up to the light, studying the handwriting, then gave the paper a cautious lick.

“Almost twenty-five years old,” he pronounced.

“Yes.”

“You’ve been keeping it all this time?” he asked.

“I haven’t peeked,” she said. “You can see the seal’s intact.”

He held the envelope beneath the light again. The Doctor had no doubts that River could have unsealed and resealed the wax blob if she’d so desired.

“Swear it,” he said, just to see how she’d react.

She held up a hand. “I swear it, on the TARDIS herself.”

“I gave this to you?”

“Yes,” River said. “Or, you will give it to me, in your future.”

“Twenty-five years ago,” the Doctor said.

“In my past,” River confirmed.

“I told you to keep it with you until tonight,” the Doctor said. “This night. Because I knew what would happen, and I knew I’d want to see some kind of proof in order to trust you.”

“Yes.”

The Doctor was still inspecting the handwriting, analyzing it from every angle.

“Do you want me to go outside?” asked River. “So you can read it in private?”

“No,” he said, unsealing the flap with one finger and pulling out the single sheet within, taking care not to rip the delicate paper.

River couldn’t see the message from here, but she could see it was written in Gallifreyan script, a very brief note from the Doctor in the future to his past, younger self. His expression as he read the missive was sad, haunted—and baffled.

At last he tossed the note aside. He stood and held out a hand to River.

“Are we good?” she asked, swallowing down a gulp of unexpected nervousness.

He gave her a brief nod in return.

River stepped forward and reached up to kiss him. He reacted first with surprise, arms flailing out at his sides, then he relaxed, putting his hands on her waist, gently, as if she might break. His mouth tasted new and familiar, all at once.

“River…” he said, “have you… before… with me?”

“Yes.”

“So there was a first time for you… with me?”

“That was a long time ago, sweetie. You still have that to look forward to. I promise you it’s well-worth the wait.”

“And you’ve been waiting years for this. My first time with you.”

“I know it’ll be equally memorable.” River reached up and kissed him again. “You told me it was.” He didn’t seem sure what to do, how to react, so River tugged his hand and led him inside, into the bedroom.

(xiv)

Lady Bianca had seen to it that River had one of the finest guest suites, both as a thanks for her work on the dig, and also because River had said she was expecting to have a romantic evening. Tall windows opened onto a balcony, with stairs leading down into a large sunken garden—a private garden, too; none of the other guest rooms had access to it.

River had brought back all her gear from her flat in Township Seventeen, and it was stashed away in a cupboard, out of sight. She would leave Vareda from the royal palace the day after next. In a way, River felt like a guilty sneak, knowing the fate that awaited the planet. Still, she couldn’t interfere with a fixed point, and she had no intention of suffering through Vareda’s version of Volcano Day.

The Doctor was slipping out of his shoes, placing them with care to the left of the doorway. River did the same. Then she went and stood at one of the windows, hands clasped in front of her. A moment later, she felt hands on her shoulders.

“River… do I teach you all this?”

“You know the answer to that, sweetie.”

“Spoilers,” he said under his breath. “It must’ve been me. How else would you…” He kissed her pile of springy curls. “Unless you’ve been looking through the TARDIS data banks.”

River just laughed.

“That vixen,” the Doctor muttered. “You’d think I could trust her after all these centuries.”

River said, “This isn’t the sort of thing I consult a computer for.” She spoke without turning to face the Doctor. “Anyway, the TARDIS is too possessive of you to give away your romantic secrets.”

His long fingers were tracing a path down the striped sleeves of River’s gown, toying with the delicate lace.

“You know… what to do?” he asked, voice taut with fear and desire.

“Yes,” River said.

She heard his gulp, then he pressed the long length of his body against hers, rubbing with a delicious, subtle movement. River closed her eyes. His hands slipped around her waist, caressing up and down the smooth stays. He took his time with this, until River grew completely relaxed. She never rushed him. The slowness was maddening, but well-worth the pleasure that would follow.

She felt his fingers on the back of her neck, unfastening the jeweled choker, and then hot, wet suction, the faintest scratch of stubble, as the Doctor kissed her neck in a lazy line from beneath her ear down to her collarbone. He kissed a semi-circle along the collar of her dress, up each vertebra, then down the other side of her neck. River stayed standing by force of will; she was accustomed to being the aggressor—only with the Doctor would she be so passive.

Then his fingers were on the hooks of her dress, unfastening them, then the laces—naughty boy; he knew exactly how to undo a lady’s gown. When he’d undone the laces down to River’s waist, the heavy silk slid from her shoulders, dropping into a shimmering pile at her feet.

She felt him tracing the criss-crossing laces of her corset. The garment was an exquisite thing, which River had had made to go with the gown: deep blue, embroidered with gray thread, worn over a dove-gray silk shift. She’d chosen the colors with deliberate care: soothing, rather than inflammatory.

“And this?” the Doctor asked.

“Oh, let’s leave it on a while longer.”

“Hmm… how about all these silly things?” His fingers were in her hair.

“Take your time,” River smiled. “There’s at least two dozen of them.”

He did just that, finding and removing each hair clip, as well as the jeweled combs that held her hair piled up. One by one, the glittering little gemstones fell into the pile of silk. At last, River’s mane of hair tumbled down into its cascade of mischievous curls.

“Would you like me to undress you?” she asked.

There was a funny catch in his voice when he answered, “Please.”

River turned, sliding her body against his as she did so, then snaked arms around the back of the Doctor’s neck, running her hands through his hair and pulling his head down closer to hers for a real kiss. Her hands went to his cravat, untying the bow and unwinding the long strip of silk from around the Doctor’s neck. River trailed fingertips along his shoulders, underneath the heavy silk of his jacket, and pushed it down his arms until it dropped onto the floor. Then she got to work on the buttons of his waistcoat.

“That’s the thing about eighteenth century clothes,” he said in a low voice. “There’s so much to get through—all the laces and bows and hooks and, and, and _layers_ , and there’s always something else to take off, one more _thing_ that has to be negotiated—”

River silenced him with another kiss. “It’s called a tease,” she said, coaxing the waistcoat down over his arms. God, he looked marvelous in that drop-shouldered, ruffled shirt. “In case you hadn’t noticed.”

“Oh,” he said awkwardly. “Yes, of course.”

River took his hand and led him over to the bed: it was large and sumptuous, the frame hung with elegant draping curtains of damask, all in deep, rich colors. River had requested a large pile of pillows. She coaxed the Doctor down until they lay side by side amid the plush cushions and fabrics.

He continued his exploration, kissing her neck and shoulders, down into her cleavage, while River ran her fingers again and again through his hair, caressing the back of his neck, and finally managed to tug the blousy shirt up over his head. She loved his body in every incarnation she’d encountered, but this one was especially nice: lithe and athletic, tautly muscled. He turned her so that her back faced him again, and his arms wrapped around her waist. Inside the corset, River was sweating heavily, and from the way the Doctor’s nostrils flared, she could tell the change in her scent was exciting him. She encouraged him, pushing her bottom into his lap, until at last he began to work the thin silk of her shift up around her thighs and hips.

River closed her eyes as his fingers explored between her legs, shuddering along with him as her scent grew deeper and richer. She covered his hand with her own, guiding his fingers, pushing into his touch to pleasure herself. The Doctor was whispering, “River, oh River,” with each movement, and he groaned out loud when she finally achieved release, his fingers slippery from her wetness.

River disentangled herself from him a bit, half turning in his arms. Her fingertips grazed along his cheekbones. “All right?” she asked, her breath huffing out, breasts heaving against the right constriction of the corset.

“All right,” he gasped.

River used her knuckles, digging deeply along the line of the Doctor’s cheekbones. Doing so, she knew, would release the contents of two tiny glands into his bloodstream. Within moments, a musky, intoxicating scent began to exude from his every pore. River pulled his head closer to hers again, kissing him, their tongues meeting in a fierce duet. He clasped her to him and began rubbing, coating her body in his scent. The intensity of his arousal made River half-wild with longing, and with an impatient gasp, she unfastened the front of his breeches and helped him pull them down to his knees, where he kicked them off, along with his gray stockings.

Without waiting for further play, River clambered up to her knees, drew up her skirt, and leaned against the stack of pillows. An instant later the Doctor was on her back, his hands deftly pulling her hips toward his own. River felt a rough prodding in her nethers, and she gasped when he pushed inside her. They moved together wildly, with no coordination or control, driven by the blind urgency of need, until the Doctor found a more steady rhythm. River pushed back against him, encouraging him, arching her body in a way that would cause her the most intense pleasure. Their movements became faster, more vigorous, both of them alternately moaning and crying out, until River climaxed in a hot, wet, delirious rush. Then came another wave, and another, each more shattering than the last, and when it seemed she could not possibly experience anything more astonishing, the Doctor pressed his fingertips into the sides of her temples.

She’d experienced this before, but still, each time was a revelation as seemingly every fiber of her body achieved stunning, joyous release. She saw in her mind vistas of incomparable beauty: a dazzling supernova; a cascading waterfall of pure diamonds; a tropical forest, lush with orchids; a blood-red sunset over an indigo sea. She screamed and screamed with the blinding ecstasy of it all, and then darkness rose up over her mind like curtains of the blackest, softest velvet. Then the bliss became the warmth of oblivion.

(xv)

Light tickled the backs of River’s eyelids, and she half-blinked. Vareda’s two moons were rising, casting long, silvery beams of light across the balcony and into the bedroom. A breeze gusted in through the open windows, carrying with it the scent of flowers.

She realized she was lying on her side, a silk sheet drawn primly up around her shoulders. River burst out laughing.

“What?” the Doctor said, indignant at the joke she was having at his expense.

“Oh, sweetie,” she said, turning to face him. “Covering me up like this. I’m not even naked.”

The Doctor’s bashful expression made her laugh even harder, and she leaned into him for a kiss. He was covered up as well, the sheet tucked around his armpits.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Me? Oh—yes, quite all right, of course. But you—?”

“What about me?”

“Well—you sort of… _screamed_ , and then you blacked out.”

“You’re very thorough, sweetie,” River said. She stretched, relishing the delicious sensation, and said, “I don’t think you left a single stone unturned.”

He went very red, and his hand drifted up to touch his face. She knew he must be wondering how she’d known about the scent glands, wondering if he had indeed told her—would tell her, in his future—what to do to release his musk. For now, there were things she couldn’t share with him. Later, he would understand her need to withhold certain pieces of information. It was odd to lie here like this, knowing that for him, so much about her was still a baffling enigma.

River knew a lot about him—not everything, obviously, but perhaps more than most of his other companions. She knew he’d been with human women in the past, in defiance of an ages-old Time Lord prohibition against mingling with “lesser” species, but in order to do so, he’d had to learn how to make love as humans did, something she knew he’d always found awkward. To the best of River’s knowledge, she was the only one who’d been able to couple with him as a Time Lord would. She couldn’t replicate the exact experience of communion with his own species, but she could at least approximate it for him.

Now he took her hand, lifted it to his mouth, and kissed her fingers. “River…” he said.

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

River tightened her body against his and said, “It was my pleasure.”

He laughed under his breath, a sound of intensely self-aware irony. “And mine.”

They kissed, and after a few moments, the Doctor pulled River on top of him. She kissed her way along his prominent jaw, down his neck and chest, sucking at his nipples. In the future, he would allow her to use her hallucinogenic lipstick on him, but at this time, there wasn’t enough trust between them for him to give up so much control. River ran her fingers through his silky black body hair, swirling patterns on his abdomen, following the ridges of muscle up and down. She enjoyed listening to the sounds he made as she used her teeth and tongue on him. Even more, she enjoyed the sound of both hearts thumping beneath his ribs.

“Hmm,” she teased, her hand moving beneath the sheet. “Someone’s up for more.”

“What?” he said jolting slightly, mesmerized by all this sensation. “Oh, yes, definitely—up for more.”

River sat up, straddled the Doctor’s hips with her thighs, and slowly sank down onto him. As she did, he let out a long, strange groan.

“Is it good?” she gasped.

His hands settled on her cinched waist, eyes half-closed. “Very good,” he breathed. River adjusted her skirt so that it draped and flowed over him like a gray tent. Quickly they found a rhythm and began moving together.

“River,” the Doctor moaned, “please don’t stop.”

Eyes rolling back in her head, River answered, “No chance of that, sweetie.”

(xvi)

“Oh. My. God.” Amy stretched her body to full length and exhaled a long sigh of contentment. “I am never getting out of this bed.”

“Not even to eat? Or use the loo?”

Amy poked Rory with her foot. “You know what I mean.”

“Hmm,” he said, gazing down at her pale, nude body. God, he just loved the contrast between her alabaster skin and her dark red hair; he felt he could look and look at her forever and never feel like he’d seen enough. He reached a finger to trace a line from her rib to her waist to her hip. “Someone should’ve painted you,” he said. “You’re a masterpiece.”

“I’ll tell you about Vincent sometime,” said Amy, coloring up.

“Vincent who?” said Rory suspiciously.

“Van Gogh,” she said. “The painter. Who was penniless. And mad. And never bathed.”

“Oh,” said Rory, mollified. “Well, he should’ve painted you—look what a chance he missed.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” Amy said, sitting to accept the glass of wine Rory offered. “Wow, they weren’t kidding about the royal accommodations.”

Rory raised his glass, and they toasted. “To Vareda,” he said. “Why can’t everywhere we visit be like this?”

“Because the Doctor would be bored to tears,” Amy said, and she swallowed some wine.

“It’s not Guinness,” Rory said. “That’s sacrilege, the way you’re gulping it.” He sighed; Amy had already drained her glass. She handed it back to him. “More, please.”

He leaned down to kiss her forehead. “You’re lucky I love you so much.”

“I know,” she smiled. Her hand reached between his legs, teasing and tickling. “Is the Scarlet Pimpernel ready to ride again?”

With a gusty laugh, Rory said, “If Marguerite would let him get to the wine bottle, he might be.”

Smirking, Amy watched his arse as he retreated across the smooth parquet floor. _Mine, all mine_. A couple of Amy’s female friends in Leadworth had wondered out loud to her what she saw in the nebbish Rory Williams. _They’ll never know_ , she thought.

He returned and got back into the bed with her. They drank their wine, Amy savoring the exquisite flavor more slowly this time.

“I love this planet,” Rory said. “They do everything right here.”

“Hm,” Amy said. “I wonder about that.”

“Really? Why?”

“I dunno,” she shrugged. “It’s like… it’s almost like it’s too good to be true. I keep expecting to find something rotten under the pretty surface. Not that I _want_ to. I just keep waiting for, you know… what’s that saying?”

“For the other shoe to drop?” Rory looked disgruntled. “You’re getting as bad as _him_.”

“It’s just experience,” Amy said, waving her half-empty wineglass in a vague circle. “Nowhere is really perfect, Rory.”

“Well, let’s for just tonight pretend it is.”

She laughed, loud and merry. “That works, too.”

They finished their wine, and Rory drew her back into his arms. “So, where were we?” Amy asked.

Rory said, “I think… they were riding horses across a beach in Normandy, weren’t they?”

“It got a little hazy around there,” Amy admitted.

Rory was kissing her face, her neck, her shoulders, her breasts. “Lost in the fog,” he murmured. “A soft, gentle, swirling mist, with the sound of the tide in the background.” He’d reached her belly and now began to trace patterns with his tongue.

Amy pushed her fingers through his short, thick hair. “So, they got off their horses and took a rest… in a sand dune.”

“A sheltered sand dune,” Rory agreed, now kissing her thighs. “Very secluded… and private.”

Amy opened her legs a bit more and pushed Rory’s head down. He needed no further encouragement; a moment later, his tongue flicked out. Amy gasped, her head arching back, as he pleasured her with his lips and teeth and tongue. And then he worked his way back up again, kissing a wet trail over belly, waist, ribs, breasts, shoulders, neck, and finally settling on her lips. Amy could taste herself in his mouth, a tangy-sweet mix of salt and vanilla.

“I think Marguerite’s ready to ride her stallion again,” Amy said, pushing Rory onto his back.

He groaned agreeably and helped her on top of him. “The stallion’s breaking down the barn door.” He groaned again, and Amy with him, when he pushed up inside her.

They gyrated with vigorous thrusts, and Amy gasped, “D’you think River likes it on top, too?”

“Not… even… oh, God, Amy,” Rory said, his eyes screwed shut in the hilarious expression he always made when he was trying not to come. Amy chewed the insides of her mouth to keep from bursting into giggles.

“Well? Does she—?”

“Amy,” Rory gasped, “just—just—think of England, yeah?”

She gave his shoulder a loving poke. “Oi,” she panted. “Scotland!”

“Oh, yes,” he gasped as they moved even faster. “Oh, Scotland!” The look on his face brought Amy to sudden, breath-stealing climax, and Rory followed, thrashing and moaning, and Amy came again, and again, collapsing at last in a breathless, giggling heap on top of her husband.

(xvii)

Mollis and Moschata had risen fully now, flooding the garden and the guest bedroom with moonlight. River stirred, and when she rolled over, she bumped into the Doctor’s prone form.

“Sorry,” she murmured. “Did I wake you up?”

“I wasn’t sleeping,” he said, and indeed, he wasn’t. The Doctor sat propped against the pile of cushions, lost in thought, but at least he didn’t appear to be brooding. He almost never slept. In all the time she’d known him, River could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she’d actually seen him asleep.

She slipped out of the bed and went into the luxurious bathroom to relieve herself. When she returned to the bed, the Doctor held a hand out to her and smiled, pulling her close to him.

“What’s the time?” she asked.

“About an hour after midnight,” he said, not needing to consult any timepiece to know this.

“It’s a beautiful night,” she said, putting hands on his shoulders and leaning in to kiss him.

He returned the kiss with fervor, then slid hands around her back. Toying with her corset laces, he asked, “Shall I?”

Knowing she’d sleep more comfortably without it, River turned her back to him. She sighed with relief when he loosened the tight laces from top to bottom, and she murmured with appreciation when he helped ease her out of the stays.

“Better?” he smiled.

“Much.” She kept her back to him, and he slid his hands around to squeeze and caress her breasts through the thin silk. When River’s nipples grew hard, he tweaked them gently with his thumbs, causing a shuddering wave of gooseflesh to sweep through her. He continued this unrushed pleasuring until River had grown thoroughly wet and throbbing again.

“Doctor… is this going anywhere?” she finally asked.

“Where would you like it go to?” he asked in a seductive voice, kissing the back of her head and toying with her curls.

River wiggled out of his lap and stretched out supine beside him, then urged him on top of her. “Is it all right this way?” she asked.

“If it’s what you want,” he said, teasing up her silk shift.

“It’s exactly what I want.” River helped guide him inside her, tightening her legs around his waist. The moonlight cast their shadows, long and black and alien, against the far wall.

(xviii)

“Agkh!” Amy made an indescribable noise in her throat, waving a hand before her face. “You smell like… like the randy old tomcat that used to spray all over our house.”

The Doctor drew himself up with wounded dignity. “Do I ever complain about the reek of human pheromones in the TARDIS?”

“Oi!” said Amy. “We always have a shower!”

“And don’t think I don’t know about that time in corridor 3B, either.” The Doctor wagged a lecturing finger at Amy.

Arms folded against her chest, Amy said, “We were lost!”

“For six hours?”

“Hey.” She glared at him. “It’s a big ship, did you know that?”

“And what about the machine shop?” the Doctor asked. “How long does it take two people to find seven lengths of pink zeta-gauge thermo-fusion cables?”

“Longer than you’d think,” Amy said.

Rory stuck his head out of the tram. “Oi, are we leaving, or are you two going to stand there arguing all day?”

At that moment, River appeared. “Sorry,” she said. “My fault—I was looking for Lady Bianca, and finally someone told me she’s not coming.” She corralled Amy and the Doctor into the tram car. The doors whooshed together, and the car began moving.

“Why won’t Lady Bianca be there?” asked Amy, surprised. “This is a big deal for the royal family, isn’t it?”

“It’s her granddaughter,” said River. “Iris decided to stop Miranda’s treatment. She’s… there’s not a lot of time left, and Lady Bianca wanted to be with Iris.”

“That’s so sad,” Amy said. “That poor family!”

River took her seat, glancing at the Doctor, who sat watching the city speed past, his face curiously expressionless.

Amy had expected the two to be closer—giggly, flirtatious, holding hands, showing more obvious signs of affection. After all, last night they’d presumably experienced some sort of consummation, hadn’t they? But neither one acted as though anything had changed.

_I’ll never figure him out_ , Amy thought, settling back into her own seat, welcoming Rory’s arm around her shoulders. She was glad her own marriage was normal—or at least as normal as the marriage of two time-traveling honeymooners could be.

The ride to Township Seventeen seemed to Amy much faster than the first one they’d taken—perhaps because the distance and the landmarks were familiar now. Rory kept his eyes wide open for exotic birds or animals. To Amy, though, the view from the windows seemed like one long, green blur.

A crowd had gathered in Township Seventeen, people clamoring in excited clusters for a glimpse of the temple. Amy could see the shape of a slender crane, its arm arching over the temple walls.

That same feeling of claustrophobic horror struck her the moment they entered the temple, even though it was full of daylight, almost noon; even with dozens of people filling the Circle of the Stars, Amy felt strangely isolated.

Professor tarq-Volsica met them in the Lunar Circle, eyes blazing with excitement.

“Well, this is it,” she said to River. “The big day’s here at last.” She looked up at the sky. “Almost noon. Shall we get started?”

“Why not?” River smiled.

As they circled around to the entrance of the Altar of the Sun, the Doctor dropped back a pace and said to Amy, “Want to wait outside?”

“No,” said Amy, hugging herself. Keeping her voice down, she said, “I have such a horrible feeling about this, but waiting outside would be worse.”

“All right,” he said, squeezing her hand. “But if you want us to leave, just tell me.”

“Thank you,” Amy said. He looked her up and down, clearly concerned. Amy wished he knew what was wrong with her. She’d hoped that after the party and a night of shagging Rory, the temple wouldn’t bother her so much, but if anything, today was worse than yesterday.

Queen Lavinia and Prince Lambert waited outside the Altar entrance; divested of their eighteenth century costumes, Amy almost didn’t recognize them. When everyone had gathered, Prince Lambert made a charming speech, thanking everyone for coming. He thanked Professor tarq-Volsica and River especially for their work on the dig. At precisely noon, he concluded his remarks. Amy noticed that now the temple was bathed in the full light of the sun—no hint of shadow lay about the high walls. The thought gave her no comfort whatsoever.

With a barely audible mechanical hum, the crane swung into motion. Ropes and clamps had already been attached to the slab on the roof, and the crane lifted away the half-ton piece of stone as easily as Amy would have lifted a dinner plate.

A couple of assistants propped a tall ladder against the wall, and River nimbly ascended. By now, Amy was too sick with worry to find any humor in the way the Doctor was trying nonchalantly not to stare up River’s legs as she climbed.

Rory squeezed Amy’s arm. “You all right?” he whispered.

River had reached the top of the wall, and Amy could see her studying something.

“What is it?” the Doctor called, looking up and shading his eyes.

River didn’t respond at first, and when she did, she only said, “I’m going in.” She caught a grappling hook on the stones and used a rope to lower herself down.

Amy tried to tell herself that if River had seen anything sinister in the chamber, she’d have said something. Wouldn’t she?

Too much time seemed to have passed before they heard a muffled thud, and then the sound of stone grating against stone. As the others watched, the door slowly began moving to one side. As soon as the opening was wide enough, Professor tarq-Volsica wiggled into the doorframe and began pushing. A few moments later, the stone had been completely moved aside. Amy wondered if the door was on some system of pulleys, or if River was just that strong.

“Your Majesty,” River said to Queen Lavinia, her face glowing with sweat. “I believe this pleasure should be yours.”

Queen Lavinia entered the Altar of the Sun, followed by Prince Lambert. A few senior members of the dig and officials from the museum followed. At last the Doctor bounced through the doorway, followed by Amy and Rory.

Amy’s knees almost gave out on her. The sense of horror was concentrated here, as if a nameless, invisible evil had long dwelled within these walls. But she saw nothing remarkable. If some sacrifice had been performed here, some atrocity committed, there was no sign of it. Just circular stone walls, a packed dirt floor, all of it earth-smelling and fusty.

At the center of the chamber lay a large rectangular boulder, as wide as an automobile and as high as Amy’s waist, carved and decorated with more sigils and glyphs, deep indentations, and depictions of wild animals. The boulder glittered beneath the sun, as if the limestone were embedded with shards of glass. Amy didn’t like it. Everyone else had circled around the thing, marveling at it, but not touching it. Professor tarq-Volsica was taking photos with her small, hand-held computer.

Atop the big stone sat a rough-looking wooden chest. The lid was closed, but Amy couldn’t see any sign of a lock. The chest looked like it had been carved from a single piece of wood, undecorated.

“It’s Late Moschatan,” Professor tarq-Volsica murmured, taking more photos. “This is…” She glanced around, as if concerned that her words might cause offense. “It’s a funerary chest.”

People murmured their interest, and Professor tarq-Volsica went on, in a louder voice, “Moschatans traditionally cremated their dead. These chests were used for the burial of clan elders.”

Amy tried not to wail in fear as Professor tarq-Volsica drew on a pair of thin plastic gloves and gingerly raised the lid of the chest. From where she was standing, Amy couldn’t see what lay inside, but she knew it must be something unspeakably vile.

“I don’t understand,” Professor tarq-Volsica murmured. “It’s—it’s just a strange scroll with… well, I don’t even know what this… this writing is. It’s not Moschatan, though.”

“Let me see.” River circled around and stared down at the chest’s contents. Her face froze into an expression of unmistakable dismay. She looked up at the Doctor.

“Sweetie,” she said, “I think you need to see this.”

The Doctor went and stood at her side, leaning forward to get a better look. He opened his mouth to speak, but the words never came out. Amy heard a horrific noise, metal screeching against stone, and a sickening, wet sound. The Doctor jolted as if shocked with electricity, and began screaming. Geysers of red blood gushed up and out with ghastly force, splattering the people, the stone, the chest, everything.

In a heartbeat, River and Rory were on top of the Doctor, River barking orders and Rory stripping off his shirt to wad against the Doctor’s leg.

Amy could hear nothing. She saw people moving, saw their mouths shaping words as they shouted, saw the Doctor grow white, his eyes rolling back into his head. His body slumped in River’s arms. Amy saw the blazing sun overhead, the sinister waves of shimmering heat. Black spots danced before her eyes and she crumpled down, the hard, packed earth rushing up to meet her. Darkness closed in over her head, and she knew nothing.

**To be continued…**


	4. What A Fool Believes--Chapter Three

_Chapter Three_

Movement. A faint mechanical hum. The cool gust of air conditioning. For a moment, Amy was back on Earth, asleep in a train or a hotel room, on a holiday she and Rory had once taken. Then she opened her eyes, and everything came back in a rush.

“It’s all right,” said a voice nearby.

Amy sat. She’d been lying on one of the tram seats, a pillow beneath her head and a sheet draped over her long body. Outside the windows, the sun still shone. Green scenery flew past; the tram was on its way back to the city.

“Rory? Doctor?”

“The Doctor was teleported to the capital. He’ll be there by now. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s already in surgery.”

The speaker was—of all people—Prince Lambert. The young man sat on the opposite side of the compartment. Apart from a uniformed female attendant, he and Amy were the only occupants of the tram car.

“Hey,” said Amy. “Do you know where River is? Professor Song, I mean. And Rory Pond—my husband?”

Prince Lambert knew exactly who she was talking about. “They both went in the tele-tram.”

“I hope that’s like a helicopter that teleports.”

Prince Lambert didn’t recognize the word helicopter—Amy wondered how the TARDIS translation circuits would transpose the concept. “What’s that?” he asked.

Amy said, “At home we have these things called helicopters that we use for emergencies. Only ours can’t teleport.”

Prince Lambert beckoned to the attendant, who brought Amy some water. “Come sit here,” the prince invited.

Amy stood and stretched, but a moment later she dropped into the seat beside Prince Lambert, grateful to be off her feet again. The water felt and tasted good.

“Are you all right?” asked Prince Lambert.

“Head’s a bit muzzy,” Amy said. Up close, Prince Lambert was even more beautiful, like a magical being in a fairy story—an elf or a wood sprite, an impression heightened by his warm, friendly eyes and melodious voice. He wasn’t Amy’s type—too small, too fey—but she nevertheless envied whatever lucky girl would one day become Mrs. Lambert.

Amy asked, “So River and Rory went with the Doctor?”

“Professor Song insisted. She said the Doctor has unusual medical requirements. She won’t let anyone touch him without her permission. Everyone’s saying he’s not human.”

“He’s not,” Amy said.

“She wanted your husband to assist in the surgery—she said he’s a nurse.”

“He is,” Amy said, thrilled and proud, despite her fear, that River trusted Rory so implicitly. Swallowing back nausea, she asked, “What—what happened? I couldn’t really see, then I blacked out.”

“The stone altar was a Moschatan spring-trap,” Prince Lambert explained. “The Moschatans used to set them in pits for hunting. Did you notice the indentations in the sides of the altar?”

“Yes,” Amy shuddered.

“Each one has a Moschatan hunting knife inside it. The chest has been taken to the museum, but the stone’s been left where it is—the area’s cordoned off, under Mother’s guards. Professor Song wants to look at it later.”

“Yeah,” said Amy, drinking more water.

“Well, the Doctor must have triggered one of the knives, probably when he brushed against the stone. It—the knife went right through his leg, severed an artery, your husband said.”

“Will the Doctor be all right?” asked Amy, her voice rising on a note of anxiety. She remembered only too well the look of those knives in the museum.

“The tram can teleport to the city in seconds and land on top of the hospital,” said Prince Lambert. “It’s all in the surgeons’ hands now. Vareda has the best physicians anywhere. If it makes you feel better, the Sisters of the Palamon will chant healing prayers until the surgery is finished. Mother requested it.”

“Give her my thanks,” Amy said, touched by the gesture. “And thank _you_ for coming with me.”

“You’re our guests,” Prince Lambert said. “Of course we’ll do whatever we can for you.” Eyes shining, he added, “They say you’re from Earth.”

“Yeah,” said Amy.

“What’s it like? We have so many stories and legends about Earth—I would’ve loved to see it.”

“You wouldn’t,” Amy said, feeling glum. “It’s—it’s dirty and overcrowded and people are always killing each other.” She didn’t feel terribly charitable toward her own species right now.

“Killing each other?” Prince Lambert’s brow furrowed. “Over what?”

“Everything,” said Amy. “Land, money, gods, anything you can think of. There are criminal gangs who kill rival gang members over the shirts and shoes they wear.”

Prince Lambert looked sad and shocked. He said, “My ancestors came from a land called Vienna.”

“That’s a city,” Amy smiled. “It’s in a country called Austria.”

“What’s it like?” he asked. “Did you ever go there?”

“No,” said Amy. “I really don’t know anything about Austria. Except there was this family, the Von Trapps, who were famous musicians. They went to America when the Nazis…” She trailed off, realizing Prince Lambert’s expression had grown blank.

“There was a… a story about them, with songs,” Amy said, struggling to think of something Prince Lambert would understand. “People would, um… perform it on stage. It was really popular.”

“Sing some of it,” Prince Lambert urged.

Amy went red in the face. “I do _not_ sing well,” she said. “Seriously. You had to hear Julie Andrews. She was the best.”

“Just try,” Prince Lambert smiled.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Amy laughed. She cleared her throat and attempted the chorus of “Climb Ev’ry Mountain.”

“That’s wonderful!” Prince Lambert exclaimed. “What does it mean, to ‘follow every rainbow?’”

“It’s just a saying,” Amy said. “It means… I guess it just means to follow your dreams. Your heart. People used to think if they could find the end of a rainbow, there’d be some kind of treasure there.”

“So, are you?” asked Prince Lambert.

“Am I what?”

“Following your rainbow.”

“Maybe,” Amy said with a short laugh. “Traveling with the Doctor—yeah, I guess that’s following a rainbow.” She shivered. “I hope he’s okay.”

Prince Lambert squeezed her hand. “We’re almost there… I’ll take you over to the hospital, and maybe we’ll find out.”

Amy looked out the window and saw a small silver-white blob on the horizon. Within minutes it grew larger and closer, the blob resolving into the distinct shapes of tall buildings and the spires of the royal palace. Somewhere in that city, the Doctor was in surgery, having his leg stitched back together. Amy didn’t often pray, but now she prayed blindly to whatever deities would listen that the Doctor somehow survived.

(ii)

Heat. All around him was scorching, stinking, stifling heat. The tunnels were close, claustrophobic, and oppressive, but he hadn’t dared use the grav-lift. All the major transit routes of the Citadel were under heavy guard now; leaving him with this disused network of tunnels to navigate. He could only hope he wouldn’t reach the far end to find the passageway had been sealed off.

He tried to think of the tunnels only as dirt and rock, inanimate, not as part of a living, breathing entity. He tried not to feel the planet itself, pulsing around him. Gallifrey, mighty and beautiful, now a scorched wasteland, convulsed in the death throes of an unwinnable war. He half-hoped that the planet would be destroyed from without, that he would die before he had time to commit this unspeakable act.

After what felt like days or even months—his normally reliable inner chronometer was badly off-kilter—he felt a gust of hot air on his face, and the tunnel tilted sharply downward, ending in loose gravel. He couldn’t get any purchase and fell the rest of the way, landing in a painful heap on some kind of metal grate, wrapping his arms around his head until the rain of small stones stopped clattering. Then he hauled himself inch by inch to his feet, checking to see that the small, heavy canister was still strapped to his back.

_Yes_. This was where he needed to be. With great care, the Doctor switched on his small, powerful torch; he’d been conserving the battery until now, feeling his way blindly underground so that he would have light when he most needed it.

The catwalk stretched out over a yawning stone chasm. Below him, at the bottom of the cavern, lay the massive conduits that drew energy from the Eye of Harmony, hidden deep below the Panopticon. Normally this place would be guarded, but all able-bodied adults had been summoned to fight on the planet’s surface, leaving this vulnerable underbelly unprotected and exposed.

The Doctor tried not to think too deeply about his actions; he just took one step at a time. First—he had to get down from this catwalk. Judging by the condition of the metal—not rusted, but dusty and a bit discolored—this span was seldom used, probably just to inspect the roof of the cavern when needed. Still, there must be a way down.

He traversed the length of the catwalk, looking for ladders or stairs. A terrible thought occurred to him: what if there was no way up or down? The Time Lords could easily have accessed this area by means of a hovering lift. Would he be stuck here, trapped beneath Gallifrey’s surface until the bitter end came and death claimed him at last?

Never one to give up, the Doctor kept walking, his footfalls quiet, yet sounding too loud, echoing out across the cavern. He was alone down here, but still he worried…

And then he saw it. At the far end of the cavern, a mechanical ladder had been mounted into the rock wall. Such devices were activated remotely, by a switch below. The Doctor didn’t need a switch. He aimed the sonic screwdriver and, with a soft hum, the ladder began to lower from its casing down to the cavern floor below. With the canister still strapped to his back, the Doctor pocketed the torch and began his descent.

He climbed and climbed in total darkness until the muscles in his legs were screaming in protest. And then, when he didn’t think he could go any further, his right foot touched solid rock. He fished for the torch and switched it on again, casting the beam of light up. The catwalk soared far overhead, a thin pencil line, charcoal gray against utter black.

He turned his attention to the conduits, which hummed as they bore energy from the Eye out to the planet. All of Gallifrey’s power, including the Time Lords’ ability to manipulate time, was centered here. And now it would be their destruction.

He wondered what was happening overhead, if the Daleks has reached the Citadel. If so, had they penetrated as far as the Panopticon? The Doctor couldn’t let either side win: he couldn’t let the Time Lords destroy all of creation in order to perpetuate an existence as disembodied entities. Nor could he allow the Daleks access to the most powerful technology ever devised. Gallifrey had to be destroyed—utterly obliterated, and then locked away so that this point in time and space could never be reached again by anyone.

The Doctor had already time-locked the Time War itself, using the power of the Matrix; now he must act quickly, to destroy the planet before either the Time Lords or the Daleks could undo that lock. The Doctor had used his own molecular structure in creating the lock; anyone who hoped to undo it would need a sample of his DNA. He knew this wouldn’t stop the Time Lords indefinitely—or the Daleks, for that matter—but he hoped it would slow them down and give him time. Time to act. Time to commit the ultimate atrocity.

He moved around the conduit with great care, watching his footing. Heat from the planet’s core had, here and there, caused cracks and fissures in the rock. He gave a start when he came across the entrance to the grav-lift: in happier times, this had provided easy access to the conduits from the Panopticon. Only the most high-ranking Time Lord technicians, of course, would be allowed down here to maintain the conduits. The controls to the grav-lift were completely dark now, and the Doctor knew that power to the lift must have been cut off from above. Still, it didn’t mean he wouldn’t be discovered. Sooner or later, one of the Time Lords would realize where he was and what he planned.

The Doctor continued his search, scanning the hulking tubes and pipes of the conduits, all forged from dwarf-star alloy, until he found what he was looking for: an innocuous hatch, scarcely wide enough to look through. Beside it was a security panel. Nobody but the President of Gallifrey could open this hatch.

The Doctor unzipped an inner pocket of his coat and withdrew something he’d been carrying around for days, hidden away, something for which the other Time Lords must be frantically searching: the Seal of the President. Romana had given it to the Doctor as she’d lain dying in his arms, her last act in life. Since the Doctor had kept the Seal from the other Time Lords, it must still work, still keyed to Romana’s genetic code.

The Doctor placed the metal disk against the security panel. A moment later, the panel hummed and clicked open. Beneath it was the outline of a hand. From another pocket, the Doctor removed a glove. The material resembled ordinary plastic, but it was in truth synthetic skin, which could be used to create a perfect replica of the surface of a hand. Romana had given this also to the Doctor, in the early days of the war, no doubt anticipating the need, acknowledging the reality that he might have to take this horrible step if she herself was not able.

Shoving aside the grief of his loss, the Doctor drew on the close-fitting glove and placed his hand against the security pad. The neutral blue glow switched to a soft yellow. The handprint had been recognized and accepted. Now the Doctor closed his eyes, focusing on the telepathic password that Romana had devised—long and complicated. She’d forced him to memorize it when she’d given him the glove, a chain of equations, sensory impressions, memories, and poetry—all experiences unique to her, things she’d allowed only the Doctor to share with her.

The yellow glow of the keypad shifted to white. The password had been accepted. The door to the tiny hatch slid open.

Inside lay utter blackness—the Eye of Harmony, the nucleus of a black hole held for millennia in perfect balance against the mass of Gallifrey itself.

Until today.

Shaking, the Doctor shrugged out of the straps that held the canister to his back. Using the sonic screwdriver, he opened the outer shell. Within the device, lights glowed and blinked. The Doctor gasped back a sob. Why? Why did it have to be him? Why did he have to be the one to enact this horrible, final solution?

In his mind, he said farewell to everyone and everything he’d ever known, to friends and foes and lovers, to worlds explored, to places known and unknown. Using the sonic, he activated the loathsome little device. One of these things could rip a planet apart, cause a sun to go supernova. The Doctor regretted with all his soul the day this one had come into his possession.

He pushed the detonation button.

“Forgive me,” he gasped, and shoved the device through the hatch, into the Eye of Harmony.

He closed the hatch and stepped back from the conduits, his legs wobbling so badly he didn’t think they would support him much longer. Why was he even trying to run? There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.

Beneath his feet, the ground rumbled and shook as seismic forces began to tear apart the planet. The convulsions threw the Doctor to the ground. The torch flew from his hand and shattered, leaving him in darkness. He staggered up to his feet, but a fissure burst open in the rock floor of the cavern, scorching the Doctor with a blast of super-heated gasses. He fell again, screaming, skin singed and blistering. Great boulders began to fall from the ceiling, smashing around him everywhere. Only seconds remained now before he was crushed to death or swallowed up in the quaking bowels of the dying planet.

Right near his head, something landed with a loud _whump_ , and impossibly, a lovely, pale light shone in the darkness. Through bleary eyes, the Doctor looked up to see the homey, beloved shape of the TARDIS, so close to him he could reach out and brush its blue outer surface with his fingertips. With a soft _click_ , the door swung open, casting a beam of light into the hellish black of the underground chasm.

The immense cowardice of his actions tormented the Doctor as he began to drag himself toward the time machine. He had time-locked his planet and his people into a loop of eternal damnation. At the very least, he should be willing to share their wretched fate. But he couldn’t do that, not with a means of escape so near at hand.

The violent convulsions continued as he hauled his injured body over the threshold and into safety. An almighty explosion made him cry out in agony and terror, and then everything went silent: the blast had blown out his eardrums. Unable to hear himself gasping and weeping, the Doctor rolled fully into the TARDIS and with one flail of his left arm, he pushed the doors shut.

The next explosion came from deep within the planet’s core, blowing Gallifrey apart with titanic power. The TARDIS went ricocheting into space, the force so powerful that it threw the Doctor into the console, breaking his back. His limp body hurtled like a ragdoll across the control room and into a wall with enough force to crush his skull. And then there was blackness and nothingness.

He came to awareness much later, though it didn’t seem to him he’d been unconscious for very long. Around him, the TARDIS engines hummed their usual low vibration. With a few wary blinks, he sat. As he did, the charred remnants of his clothes flaked off his pale skin and fluttered down to a grated metal floor. The Doctor looked around. The central console and the time rotor had changed in appearance. Support pillars, coral in color and branching like tree limbs, arched up toward the ceiling.

He’d regenerated, and the TARDIS had rebuilt itself after the cataclysm. The Doctor tried to make sense of it all. He’d escaped. Impossibly—he’d escaped.

He lurched upright, more burnt flakes of fabric falling like black snow to the floor. The Doctor ran hands down his smooth torso. Tall—he was taller now; he could feel it. Up over his neck: big chin, big nose, protuberant ears. His head felt naked and queer, his hair only a slight fuzz beneath his fingertips. His beautiful hair, always his crowning glory, shorn and gone. He harbored absolutely no curiosity about his new appearance, no urge to look in a mirror, no wish to see the outer shell of the vile creature he’d become.

He staggered over to the console on legs thick and clumsy and nerveless, as if they’d lost all sensation. He circled the console until he found the scanner. Holding his breath, he switched on the screen.

After a moment’s static, the scanner blinked to life. The Doctor stared at horizontal stripes of color: purple, olive, gold, cherry-red. The surface of a planet, seen from its orbit, so massive that the Doctor couldn’t see the entire sphere from this vantage point. He was looking down into its atmosphere; minerals from countless volcanoes, superheated to a gaseous state and belched into the stratosphere, causing those bands of color. He was in the solar system of the star Epsilon Eridani, staring at its largest planet, Epsilon Eridani b. The force of Gallifrey ripping apart had thrown the TARDIS clear across the Pisces-Cetus Supercluster Complex.

The Doctor put a hand on the console—a large, square, strong hand with long fingers. This incredible machine had saved his life—had plucked him from the maw of death and transported him out of the time lock to safety. He realized the TARDIS must have read his genetic code in the lock and unraveled it enough to dematerialize through the barrier. The lock would have snapped shut behind him, leaving the planet in a never-ending circle of destruction.

Leaning down toward the console, the Doctor said, “Thanks, old girl,” startled by his new voice. A beautiful voice, the tones full and round, but old and bewildered and so very, very sad.

The guilty knowledge of what he’d done sank down over him like a suffocating cloak of black ash. His home world was destroyed, his people annihilated, and it was all his own doing. He stood hunched over the console, sobbing quietly, as the remnants of his predecessor’s clothing continued to flake like diseased skin away from his new body.

(iii)

“How is he?”

River had been so lost in thought that the voice propelled her to her feet like an adrenaline-fueled rocket, mentally cursing her carelessness. Her right hand shot down for her blaster, but she remembered in an instant she was unarmed—civilians on Vareda were prohibited from carrying weapons—and her hands snapped up to her torso, her body shifting into combat stance.

“Professor Song?” Lady Bianca stepped back, her face bewildered and apprehensive.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” River dropped her hands and relaxed her posture. Still, Lady Bianca was wary. She’d never seen this side of River—the trained warrior.

“I just wanted to see if the Doctor was all right—if there’s anything I can do.”

River sighed. “Thank you,” she said. “He’s stable—that’s all the surgeons could do. The rest is up to his immune system. He does heal quickly, but…”

“But you still worry.” Lady Bianca stepped into the room, her curious gaze darting about before settling on the Doctor’s prone form. Beneath the tangle of wires, he was almost unrecognizable. A wall of computer monitors tracked his vital signs. Lady Bianca stared at one screen in particular, her eyes growing wider. “Is that his _brain_?” she breathed.

“You should see it when he’s conscious,” River said, chuckling despite her worry. “He could reduce that monitor to a hulk of metal components if he wanted to.”

“Still, that’s remarkable.” Lady Bianca stepped closer, watching the flux of the myriad oscillating lines. “So much activity!”

“He’s dreaming,” River said, smiling with tenderness. She touched the Doctor’s forehead, which was dotted with electrodes. “He’ll be ever so cross with me tomorrow—we had to give him a liter of morphine to keep him unconscious during the surgery. It makes him have nightmares. That’s what you’re looking at right now.”

They stood in silence for a few moments, watching the firestorm inside the Doctor’s mind. Then Lady Bianca said, “I was going to get a light supper—could I get you something while I’m in the canteen?”

“Just some black tea, please,” River said. “I need to stay awake.”

“No food?”

“No, digestion makes me groggy. Just tea. And thank you so much.” For the first time, River wondered why Lady Bianca was in the hospital in the small hours of the morning. Even Amy had returned to the palace to sleep, mostly at Rory’s insistence. “What are you doing here?”

Lady Bianca said, “Miranda’s gone into her terminal phase. I’m over in the children’s ward, with Iris and Hector. Waiting.”

Overwhelmed, River embraced the older woman. “I’m so, so sorry,” she said. “How’s—how is Iris?”

“How would any mother be?” asked Lady Bianca. “She’s torn to pieces.”

“I’m sorry,” River said again, hating the inadequacy of the words. “That poor woman.”

Lady Bianca sighed, and in the gusty exhalation, River heard years of worry and sorrow. “We’ve known this day would come,” she said. “As much as we tried to deny it. Tried to hope…” Lady Bianca drew herself up straighter, rather prim, as if worried she’d said too much or breached some kind of protocol, very much the queen’s steward again. “I’ll get you that tea.”

“Thank you,” River said.

After Lady Bianca left, River sat staring at the Doctor. At the very worst, he would regenerate, and she would have to contend with a new body and a different personality, but he would be alive, fundamentally the same man. For Miranda, though, there was no hope at all.

(iv)

Iris had fallen asleep despite her best efforts to remain conscious, the years of worry taking their toll, especially the last few agonizing months of hopes raised and then bitterly dashed. She berated herself for the lapse, for letting precious hours of her daughter’s life slide away from her.

In truth, this time was irrelevant, as it could no longer be shared with her daughter; Miranda had lapsed into a coma-like state, her body gaunt and twig-like beneath the white sheet. She’d been taken off all life support. A single IV line delivered only fluids to keep her hydrated and medication to ease any pain she might still be capable of feeling. An oxygen mask helped her breathe. She’d been made as comfortable as possible, the toxic drugs discontinued. Within the next few hours, Miranda would slide away from life, never to return. Iris gazed down at the wizened little face, feeling she’d give anything to see her daughter’s eyes open even one more time.

In a chair nearby, Hector sat, staring intently at Miranda, as if he could will her back to life with only the force of his gaze. On a table beside him lay a tray that Lady Bianca had brought up earlier from the hospital canteen, the food mostly uneaten; none of them had had any appetite. Now Lady Bianca had vanished again, probably to exercise her legs or find a bathroom. Outside the windows of Miranda’s room, night still lay thick and black over the capital city.

Hector and Iris looked up when Lady Bianca entered. She assessed both her daughter and granddaughter with her level gaze, then she drew from her robe a long syringe filled with a dark fluid. Iris gasped.

“Mother—no!”

Voice heavy with grief, Lady Bianca said, “What difference does it make?”

Iris fought back a sob. Still, she had to ask herself the same question. What did a few hours really matter?

Hector stood. “Lady Bianca,” he said, “you shouldn’t have to…” He held out his hand for the syringe.

Iris got to her feet also, giving both of them her most imperious expression.

“I’m her mother,” she said. “I should be the one.”

Without another word, Lady Bianca handed the syringe to her daughter. Iris circled Miranda’s bed and injected the fluid straight into the IV line. A few moments later, Miranda’s chest rose and fell, and she settled back into the pillows. Iris swore the girl’s eyelids fluttered. She took Miranda’s withered hand in her own and gently stroked the discolored skin.

“Goodbye, baby,” she whispered.

(v)

The console room dissolved, the mechanical thrum of the TARDIS engines resolving into the quiet whisper of medical equipment. The Doctor realized he was staring up at a pale ceiling overhead. From nearby came an irregular, wet buzzing noise.

There was something strange and uncomfortable attached to his face, and it took a moment for him to identify the thing as an oxygen mask. The Doctor raised an impatient arm to move it aside, but a stinging pinch in the crease of his left arm warned him of an IV port. He tried the right arm and found clamps attached to his first three fingers. With clumsy effort, the Doctor pushed the triangle-shaped breathing mask aside so that he could better assess his situation. His left leg was encased in some kind of heavy cast and propped up on a foam wedge. Sheets and blankets were draped over his right leg, more over his upper body. Clear fluid dripped down from the IV line into his left arm. He could feel clamps on the toes of his right foot. A jungle of brightly-colored wires attached to a plethora of electrodes on his chest, surrounding both hearts, led to a bank of computers to his left. More electrodes on his forehead and temples led to a computer that monitored his brain activity, the machine now struggling to keep up with the immense workings of his conscious mind. In the greatest affront to his Time Lord dignity, he’d been catheterized. For the moment, the Doctor wasn’t going anywhere.

Outside the windows of the hospital room, dawn lightened the sky as Vareda rotated into Stellata’s life-giving rays. This was it: Volcano Day, the day the planet’s civilization would collapse.

Irritated by the sonorous, wet buzzing, he turned his head to the right, and his fit of pique dissolved when he saw River slumped in a chair, still dressed in her clothes from the previous day, dusty and rumpled and sweat-stained. She must have fallen asleep while she’d been watching over him. He regarded her with tenderness, watching her sleep, head lolling to one side, mouth open as she snored, saliva dribbling down her chin. She’d been trying to keep herself awake all night from the look of things, guarding the Doctor in his vulnerable state.

He forced himself to relax, unwilling to disturb River’s slumber after all the effort she’d exerted on his behalf. A wave of fresh sadness swept through him, causing a great spike on the computer screen that monitored his brain. Every time he encountered this maddening, enigmatic woman, he fell a little more in love with her. He’d tried to resist, but how could he not fall for someone so clever and audacious; how could he not be intrigued by the tantalizing glimpse she offered into his own future?

He wondered, too, how frustrating it must be for her to encounter him in this young, naïve state, how careful she had to be around him, lest she reveal too much. He knew that in the future, _his_ future, their situations would be reversed: he would be the one needing to guard secrets, and she would be younger, probably wondering if even one word he told her was the truth. She’d have to take everything on faith. Somewhere in the middle of the complex tangle of their relationship, they would both be on more or less equal footing; the Doctor looked forward to that time, although he knew it would be short-lived. He tried to imagine River as a young woman—it wasn’t difficult; she would still be intelligent and curious and full of moxie, the beauty of maturity replaced by the heartbreaking loveliness of youth.

He stared up at the ceiling, wondering if the passion they’d shared the previous night would fundamentally change anything between them. Most likely not. The true nature of her identity—and her crimes—were cards River was still playing close to her vest. She’d offered enough hints, though, that the Doctor could guess; he wasn’t stupid, after all. He’d made a few deductions, though he kept those to himself. But all of that still paled beside the one secret the Doctor knew he must keep from her over the entire course of their relationship: he knew the exact time, place, and circumstances of her death, a burden often unbearable to carry.

Of all the puzzles that River presented, finding a way to alter her death was the one that, at times, preoccupied him the most. He knew he shouldn’t even allow his mind to contemplate this, but he couldn’t help it. The more he knew her, the more he loved her, and the more he wanted to save her. Look how much effort she’d gone through these past hours just to keep him from regenerating—not dying, even, just changing his body—

The memory of his injury came back with ghastly, precise clarity: the excruciating pain, the shock, the hideous weakness as his life’s blood had gushed out of him. The computer hissed as the Doctor wrestled the horror into submission, locking it into a room in his mind. He knew the memory was there, he knew what had happened, but at least he wouldn’t be tormented by reliving the experience over and over.

If only he could do likewise with the destruction of Gallifrey, but that memory was too big to contain, too shot through with intense trauma: grief, guilt, fear, every emotion searing him with profound force. Even now that he’d made peace—more or less—with his actions in the war, that memory would plague him for the rest of his existence. _As well it should_ , the Doctor told himself sternly. One couldn’t “get over” or “move past”—to use human vernacular—destroying one’s planet and committing genocide against one’s species. He couldn’t have allowed the Time Lords to destroy all of creation in order to save themselves; the burden of mass murder was something he’d taken upon himself because the alternative was unthinkable. But it didn’t make his actions right or good or commendable, only tragically, bitterly necessary.

The Doctor flexed the muscles of his left leg. Apart from a residual ache deep in the bone, which was already fading, his body’s ability to heal rapidly had taken care of the wound. Now, if only he could get out of this confounded bed. He glanced again at River, still hating to wake her up and disturb her rest—

She jumped, snorting loudly into immediate consciousness, right hand snapping to her hip, trying to grab a weapon that wasn’t there.

“You can put the gun down,” the Doctor said dryly.

River leaped out of the chair, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. “My God, how long was I out for?” she gasped, staring out the window. “Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry. I must’ve fallen asleep.” She checked the cluster of monitors. “How’s your leg?”

“Good as new,” the Doctor said. “Now, could you please get me out of this… this _contraption_? I need to look at that codex.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” River scolded. “You lost over half your blood yesterday; you should at least have some food and test your weight on that leg—”

“River, if I don’t get out of this bed right now, I’m going to go stark raving bonkers, and really, you don’t want to see me when I get like that.”

“I have,” she smiled. “It’s quite sexy, actually.”

He pawed at her hand, banter forgotten. “Did they transfuse me?”

“We used blood you had in the TARDIS med suite,” River said. “It was in the fridge—it was old, but it was the only Time Lord blood available.”

“The age doesn’t matter,” the Doctor said. “It still works.”

“We used everything you had in storage—I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” the Doctor said. “You were here—you were here during the surgery?”

“Yes, I was,” River said, stroking his face. “I told the surgeons what to do. Rory was here, too, assisting.”

“Aah, Rory the Roman,” the Doctor smiled. Voice rising in sudden alarm, he asked, “What about the blood—there was blood everywhere.”

“Everything was washed with ammonia, including the altar,” River said. “The codex is in the museum. Everything that was used in the surgery was incinerated.”

He sagged against the mattress. “Thank you.”

River’s face crumpled; delayed shock, followed by overwhelming relief. To the Doctor’s vast consternation, she began sobbing.

“River, River,” he said, trying to take her hand, but the damned clamps on his fingers made it almost impossible. “I’m all right; really, I’m right as rain.”

She slumped down beside him, sobbing into his shoulder, soaking the sheet and the fabric of his hospital gown. The Doctor resigned himself to letting her cry it out. “River, oh River,” he whispered, stroking her curls.

After a few moments, she regained emotional control and sat up. “I’ll get you sorted,” she said, striding into the adjoining bathroom to wash her hands. She emerged, all smiles now, pulling on a pair of medical gloves with a practiced snap. “First, let’s get these electrodes off your head before you melt the monitor.”

(vi)

While the Doctor was in the shower, River buzzed the canteen through the communication system and ordered breakfast. The food was delivered with alacrity, arriving just as the Doctor emerged from the bathroom, toweling dry his hair. The hospital staff had even cleaned and mended his clothing. The Doctor ate while fastening his bow tie, combing his hair, and tying his shoes, ignoring River’s pleas for him to at least sit down.

As he gulped the last swallows of warm tea, there was a commotion of voices in the corridor, and into the room burst Amy and Rory, not bothering to announce themselves.

“Oh, my God, you’re all right!” Amy fairly threw herself at the Doctor, almost knocking him into the computers.

“Yes, yes, I’m good as new, no harm done,” the Doctor said, but he squeezed Amy gently and rubbed her back. “I’m all right, I promise,” River heard him whisper.

Rory was staring at the Doctor with a slack jaw. Finally he pointed both index fingers at the Time Lord and said, “If everyone healed as fast as that, I’d be out of a job.”

The Doctor held out an arm to include Rory in his embrace, ruffling the young man’s hair. “Thanks for looking after me,” he said.

“It was my pleasure,” Rory said. “You’ve got some of the most amazing veins and arteries I’ve ever seen.”

“Eew, could we please not get all clinical and gross?” Amy protested.

There was a tap on the door, and Professor tarq-Volsica peered into the room. “May I interrupt?” she asked, then she blurted out, “You—you’re standing up!”

The Doctor didn’t answer her question, getting straight to business. “Where’s the codex?” he asked.

“It’s in the Royal Museum,” Professor tarq-Volsica responded, still looking like a beached fish. “Queen Lavinia would like you to have a look at it.”

The Doctor responded, “Tell her we’re on our way.”

(vii)

It was a small group that gathered in a private room of the Royal Museum: Queen Lavinia, Professor tarq-Volsica, River, the Doctor, Amy, and Rory, the latter two only allowed to view the codex at the Doctor’s insistence.

Rory said, “So this is it, then? The Codex of the Final Days?”

They all huddled around the wooden chest, staring into the box, and Professor tarq-Volsica provided, “The codex itself is made from the inner bark of a palamon tree. And that’s not ink; it’s dried animal blood. Moschatans didn’t have written language. We’ve never seen anything like this codex before. Honestly, in my entire career, this is the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen.”

Amy murmured, “Doctor, why can’t we read this? You said the TARDIS translation circuits could translate anything.”

Rory added, “And why is most of it those wavy lines, but that bit right there—” he pointed “—is completely different?”

The Doctor looked grave and troubled. “The wavy lines aren’t writing,” he said. “It’s a thought-print. A Moschatan elder must have received a message telepathically, probably didn’t understand it, and drew these lines, because that’s what it looked like in his mind.”

“Or her mind,” Professor tarq-Volsica said. “Some of the clan elders were women.”

“What does it say?” River asked the Doctor. “You’re the only one here who’s telepathic.”

“It says, ‘The empire of the outlanders will end in the Year of the Palamon, when—’”

“When what?” Amy prompted.

The Doctor was reluctant to answer, so River pointed to the odd characters painted on the bottom left of the tree bark. “That bit right there is a language called Middle Kaledese. It’s the formal written language of the planet Skaro.” She glanced at the Doctor, who continued to brood over the codex. “The home world of the Daleks.”

“Daleks?” Rory snorted. “You mean that stone thing at the museum? Those things had a _language_?”

The Doctor said, “Daleks are mutated Kaleds. The Kaleds evolved the language; the Daleks just stole it.”

“So, what’s it say?” asked Amy. All this mystery was making her impatient.

“ _Ka Faraq Gatri_ ,” River provided, grimacing as she spoke, as if she’d uttered some foul obscenity. “Depending how you translate, it means either ‘the bringer of darkness’ or ‘the destroyer of worlds.’ It also translates as ‘the oncoming storm.’” She glanced again at the Doctor, as if unsure what to say next.

“It’s me,” the Doctor said, stepping back from the box, clearly agitated by this turn of events. “It says ‘The empire of the outlanders will end in the Year of the Palamon, when the Bringer of Darkness comes.’”

“You?” said Rory, not sure whether he believed this or not.

“It’s the Daleks’ name for the Doctor,” River said. “Their most feared enemy.”

“So where’d the telepathic message come from?” asked Amy, bewildered. “Daleks?”

“The Ood,” the Doctor said. “This is an Ood prophecy.”

River murmured, “Ood prophecies can be felt across all of time and space, anywhere, at any time. The clan elder who received this message must have been incredibly…” She trailed off at the Doctor’s expression. “What?”

“There might’ve been a time crack on Vareda,” the Doctor said.

Amy said, “Is that why I felt so afraid in the temple? Because I grew up next to a time crack, and I knew something was going to happen to you?”

River said, “It’s definitely a reference to the Doctor, though, otherwise why the use of Kaledese? The Ood weren’t referring to darkness in a metaphorical sense. They were referring specifically to one person—you, Doctor.”

Rory said, “So assuming the ‘outlanders’ are the Mollisians… does this mean Mollisian rule on Vareda will end now that the Doctor’s here?”

“It doesn’t matter,” the Doctor said sharply, “because we’re leaving. Now.”

Speaking for the first time, Queen Lavinia said, “You will not leave! You will stay on Vareda until we have a rational explanation for all this!”

Professor tarq-Volsica said, “Doctor, someone was willing to murder you to keep you from translating this. At the very least, we should try to learn who it was.”

“How’d you figure that?” asked Amy.

River said, “Because the Doctor’s the only one who could read the prophecy.”

(viii)

Queen Lavinia insisted on retiring to the royal apartments, where she left them in an anteroom. They sat together, not quite prisoners, but not exactly at liberty, either. Professor tarq-Volsica had gone with the queen.

As soon as they were alone, Rory said, “So the altar was a Moschatan pit-trap? They’d dig a pit, put one of those things at the bottom, and anything that fell into it would be skewered?”

River nodded. “Before knives, they used spears. Sometimes the trap would be a bole of wood, in the southern regions, where trees are more common. Up in this region, they’d use stone, because it was found in greater abundance. But typically, the knives would spring out from the trap all at once, not just one knife at a time.”

“That’s what I’m wondering,” Rory said. “The trap in the temple is an ancient, authentic trap, not some kind of modern re-creation?”

“No, it’s authentic, all right,” River said.

Rory asked, “So how could something created ages ago specifically target the Doctor? River, you and Professor tarq-Volsica both touched the stone and the box… why was the trap only triggered when the Doctor touched it?”

Amy asked, “And why would some Moschatan hundreds or thousands of years ago even know the Doctor would come here now? And open the temple?”

The Doctor was pacing, pausing every few seconds to look out the window at the city. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “What matters is we should leave now, before we do any more damage.”

Insulted, Amy said, “Oi, we haven’t damaged anything, and we’re kind of trying to figure out who tried to kill you!”

River said, “Rory has a good question, though. Anyone could’ve been injured or killed by those knives, but you were the only one who was hurt.”

The Doctor ceased his pacing and threw himself into the nearest chair.

Amy said, “Maybe one of the Moschatans sort of… saw the future through one of the cracks and designed the pit-trap to target the Doctor.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Rory argued. “You’d think the Moschatans would want the codex to be found and translated, so that everyone would know the Mollisian rule was ending. Or supposed to end. If the Doctor had died, nobody would ever know what it said, and the codex would just gather dust in a museum.”

“Good logic,” River praised.

Amy said, “If someone attacked the Doctor to keep the codex from being read… well, it would almost have to be a Mollisian, wouldn’t it? I think Rory’s right—the Moschatans would want the translation to be broadcast everywhere.”

The four of them exchanged uneasy glances, and Amy whispered, “D’you think it’s _her_? Queen Lavinia? Or maybe Prince Lambert?”

Also keeping his voice down, Rory said, “They’d have more reason than anyone to want the codex not to be translated.”

Amy said, “So why keep us here? Why not just let us go, especially since the Doctor said he’d rather leave?”

Rory said, “Would anyone on Vareda take that codex seriously? I mean, an ancient prophecy? Kind of naff, isn’t it?”

“They might,” said River. “Most Moschatans would find it interesting, to say the least.”

Amy asked, “Has there ever been any kind of… I dunno, a threat of Moschatan rebellion or uprising?”

River said, “No, none. There weren’t a lot of Moschatans to begin with, and most of them were pretty well wiped out when the Mollisians colonized the planet. They don’t have the numbers for any kind of rebellion, and there’s not even a concentrated population of them living anywhere on Vareda. They’re scattered all over the planet. The largest number of Moschatans is probably here in the capital, but even then, you’re only talking about one percent of the city’s population.”

“So, who’d benefit from the Doctor not translating the codex?” asked Rory.

River sighed. “As much as I hate to say it, the royal family. As well as every other Mollisian on this planet.” She looked at the Doctor. “Sweetie, you’ve been quiet.”

The Doctor hopped up to his feet. “I need to go look at that stone,” he said. “You’re all assuming that knife was meant for me, but I only arrived on the planet yesterday. If the knife was meant for anyone, River, I’d think it would be either you or Professor tarq-Volsica. You’re the ones who’ve been excavating the temple.”

“He has a point,” Rory said.

River strode over to the door of the anteroom. To her amazement, there were no guards posted. The Doctor must not be considered an immediate threat. The royal quarters were quiet.

“Come on,” she said. “The tram plantform’s not far from here.”

(ix)

When they reached the platform, River shooed them away from the tram itself. They went through a short corridor Amy hadn’t noticed earlier and emerged onto another platform. “This will be much, much faster,” River said.

“What’s this?” asked Rory, staring at a box-like contraption that resembled a windowless version of the queen’s tram.

“Tele-tram,” said the Doctor. “It’s one of the medical cars. We can be there and back before anyone even realizes we’re gone.” Once all four of them were inside and the doors closed, the Doctor aimed the sonic screwdriver at the controls. There was a mechanical whirl, and Amy felt a slight pressure in her ears and sinuses.

A moment later, the vibration stopped, and the doors whooshed open. They’d teleported to a transmat module right outside the temple.

“It’s faster than the TARDIS,” Rory said.

“Quieter, too,” Amy added, but she fell silent. The Doctor didn’t look like he was in the mood for jokes.

“Medical bay,” River provided. “This is the emergency transport module.”

The Doctor was rummaging in a nearby cupboard.

“What’s that?” Amy asked.

He stuffed something into his trouser pockets. “Process of elimination.”

(x)

The first thing Amy noticed was the complete lack of menace when she walked into the temple.

“It’s gone,” she said, relieved and confused. “I don’t have that horrible feeling any more.”

“Because the threat is over,” the Doctor said, loping at top speed around the Circle of the Stars and into the Lunar Circle. The others raced to keep up with him.

“So, that’s what I felt?” asked Amy. “I had some weird premonition you were going to be attacked?”

“Because you grew up next to the time crack,” the Doctor said. “Even now that the cracks are closed, you still felt the residual energy of the Ood prophecy—it was powerful enough to make a Moschatan clan elder hundreds of years ago paint a mind-print on tree bark, and it was strong enough to affect your emotional state.”

The guard posted outside the Altar of the Sun looked astonished to see them. “You,” she sputtered. “You—you’re alive—and walking—and—”

“Yes, yes,” the Doctor said, taking advantage of her confusion to brush past her. “Just revisiting the scene of the crime—won’t be a moment.”

He circled the altar. If the sight of the gruesome knife gave him any kind of post-traumatic flashbacks, he didn’t show it. Amy wondered how he could examine the altar with such detachment.

“Right,” he said. He fished into his pocket and drew out something wrapped in white paper. “Amy, give me a cheek swab.”

“A what?” she laughed.

“Just swipe the inside of your cheek.”

“Oh-kay,” she said. She tore open the paper wrapper, finding a cotton-tipped medical swab inside. Amy ran the tip around the inside of her mouth and handed it to the Doctor. “Now what?”

She watched, baffled, as the Doctor wet the tip of his sonic screwdriver with her saliva. “Stand back,” he said, and aimed the device at the altar.

Nothing happened.

“Rory, your turn.” The Doctor handed him a new swab, then he cleaned the tip of his sonic with a handkerchief and re-wet the device, this time with Rory’s saliva.

He pointed the tool at the altar. They heard the familiar sonic whine, but once again, nothing happened.

“River, you next.”

He repeated the process, and this time, they all heard a very faint noise from within the stone.

“And now, the moment of truth.” The Doctor used a clean swab and put his own saliva on the sonic. He made everyone leave the inner chamber and stand outside, behind the safety of the stone walls, before he aimed and activated the sonic.

There was a loud screech of metal against stone, and a sickening _thunk_. Amy gasped and peered into the small chamber. The entire surface of the stone altar now bristled with Moschatan hunting knives.

(xi)

“DNA,” said Rory, his mind leaping to the most logical conclusion. “It’s—how’d that happen?”

“The trap is keyed to the Doctor’s DNA,” River said.

“How’d they get his DNA?” Amy asked.

“The fancy dress ball,” the Doctor said. “I changed clothes, cleaned my teeth, brushed my hair…”

“So, what, someone nicked your hairbrush or toothbrush?” asked Amy, wrinkling her nose.

“And why’d the trap sort of… click when the Doctor used River’s DNA?” Rory asked.

Amy gave his ankle a little kick. “Kind of obvious, Stupid,” she muttered.

River flashed a glowing smile at the Doctor, and Rory blushed bright pink. “Oh, yeah, right,” he said. “I forgot about… that.”

“But nobody has access to the guest quarters,” River said, growing serious now. “Except the people that are staying there.”

“Servants?” asked Amy.

“Why would some maid or butler want to kill the Doctor?” Rory asked.

“He’s right,” said River. “It would have to be someone who could get into our rooms.”

Amy pointed to the altar, to the multitude of Moschatan hunting knives. “So, how would the Doctor’s DNA make _that_ happen?”

“Easy,” the Doctor said. “The stone is full of Varedan clear quartz crystal.” Amy realized that was what she’d seen the day before—the glass-like stuff glinting in the sunlight.

“And the crystals conduct energy,” Rory said.

River said, “It wouldn’t take very advanced technology to program the trap to open in response to one person’s DNA. Anyone on Vareda could’ve done this.”

“Not anyone,” the Doctor said. “Only someone with access to this site.”

“And access to the guest rooms,” Rory added. “That can’t be a very long list.” He frowned. “All this, just to keep the Doctor from translating those… those Ood squiggles?”

Amy said, “And how did anyone program the trap if that big slab was on the roof until just yesterday?”

“It wasn’t,” the Doctor said, glancing at River. “Someone moved it.”

River nodded. “When I climbed up yesterday, I could see scrape marks on the stones. Very faint, so someone must’ve shifted the slab just far enough to get down inside the chamber.”

“Who?” asked Amy, hugging herself. “Who’d do something so horrible?” Then she blurted out, “Oh, God… was it Professor tarq-Volsica? She has access to the temple, and she’s a Moschatan, right?”

At that moment, the guard, who’d been waiting outside—and probably eavesdropping—appeared in the archway.

“Professor Song, Queen Lavinia’s looking for you at the palace.”

“We’ve been missed,” River sighed. “Shit.”

“Come on,” the Doctor said. “We should tell the queen what we’ve found.” They left the temple and sprinted back to the tele-tram.

“So, is it Professor tarq-Volsica?” asked Rory.

“That doesn’t make sense,” River said. “Jacquetta benefited quite a lot from the reparations under Mollisian rule—if the Moschatans ever rose to power again, she’d be very likely to lose her job and everything she’s worked for. But if she _was_ involved with some conspiracy to overthrow the Mollisians, she’d want the codex translated and the prophecy broadcast over the entire planet. I can’t see how it would be her—she wouldn’t benefit either way.”

They piled into the tram and the doors whooshed shut. The Doctor soniced the controls. He said, “It wasn’t Jacquetta.”

“Then who was it?” asked Amy.

“Only one person had the means, the motive, and the opportunity,” the Doctor said.

The transmat module stopped vibrating, and the tram doors opened. On the platform stood Professor tarq-Volsica, her face gray, visibly shaken.

“Jacquetta, what’s happened?” asked River in alarm.

“It’s Lady Bianca,” said Professor tarq-Volsica, handing River a small, folded piece of paper. “She’s been taken into custody. She confessed to the attack on the Doctor, barely a quarter of an hour ago.”

“Oh, my God!” said Amy. “Lady Bianca?”

The Doctor said, “Means, motive, opportunity. She was the only one with all three.”

(xii)

“I don’t believe it,” River said. “Lady Bianca’s—she’s—she wouldn’t harm anyone—”

“Not unless the Escalus line of stewards was at stake,” the Doctor said. “If the royal family falls, Lady Bianca’s family falls with them.”

“And she has full access to the entire royal palace, including the guest rooms,” Amy said. “She was the one who arranged our rooms for us, so she knew where we all were staying.”

Rory said, “And she had access to the dig site. Nobody would’ve questioned the queen’s steward.”

“What’s that note say?” asked Amy.

River unfolded the piece of paper, read the brief message, and looked up, her expression full of dismay. “Miranda died early this morning,” she said quietly. “Lady Bianca was waiting until… until it was over to confess. She wanted to be with Iris. At the end.”

They all stood staring at each other, stricken. The Doctor didn’t look as though he felt vindicated, his expression more troubled than anything else.

“Come with me,” said Professor tarq-Volsica. “Queen Lavinia would like to see you now.”

(xiii)

To Amy’s surprise, Lady Bianca was there in the queen’s quarters, seated and flanked by two guards. When the Doctor walked in, Lady Bianca didn’t react to him, though she regarded Professor tarq-Volsica with great scorn.

“I believe you have an apology to make, Bianca,” Queen Lavinia said. She sounded like a stern, disapproving parent.

“I owe no interloper any kind of apology,” Lady Bianca said. The habitual kindness of her face had been replaced by an expression of haughty coldness. To the Doctor she said, “I only wish I’d driven that knife into both of your miserable hearts!”

River said, “Why did you do this, Lady Bianca? What could you possibly gain?”

“The knowledge that our beautiful planet won’t be re-taken by those—those spotted savages!”

Professor tarq-Volsica folded her arms as if she didn’t believe a single word Lady Bianca had to say. From her expression, Amy guessed she’d been called worse than “spotted savage.”

River said, “How did you know what was on that codex?”

Lady Bianca laughed, a cruel, unpleasant sound. “And you, you mercenary academic whore, selling your services to whoever will pay the highest price! It’s not surprising a cretin like you wouldn’t realize the Altar was opened a fortnight ago.”

Professor tarq-Volsica turned to Queen Lavinia. “Is that true, Your Majesty?”

Queen Lavinia looked contrite, resigned to this inevitable disclosure. “It was at my order,” she said. “All the temple altars were opened in advance of the official ceremonies—to assure nothing was found that could discredit the royal line of Mollisians.”

“Was anything found?” asked River.

“No,” Queen Lavinia said with a short, self-deprecating laugh. “We even thought the codex was just meaningless lines painted on tree bark. It didn’t look remotely Moschatan. I didn’t see any harm in the Altar being opened, so I allowed the ceremony to proceed.”

Amy addressed Lady Bianca. “Why’d you attack the Doctor if you didn’t even know there was a message in the codex?”

“It was such an unusual thing,” Lady Bianca said, not looking directly at Amy, as if any non-Mollisian were beneath her contempt. “I couldn’t risk the queen or my family being brought down.”

River asked, “Why are you lying?”

Lady Bianca gave her a scornful expression but said nothing.

After a moment, Queen Lavinia said to her guards, “Please take her away. We will question her later, in more detail.”

(xiv)

“She’s lying,” Amy said.

“Of course she’s lying,” Rory responded. They’d gone back to their suite of rooms and were packing their belongings, at the Doctor’s direction. He wanted to leave Vareda immediately. “Covering something up, probably to protect either the queen or Iris.”

He vanished into the loo while Amy went through the bedroom, gathering up their clothes, stuffing everything into duffel bags and rucksacks. _We need to do some washing_ , she thought. _We’re running out of clean clothes_. She wondered if the Doctor wouldn’t mind a quick nip back to Leadworth.

For a moment, Amy stood staring at the gown she’d worn to the fancy dress ball, hanging inside the wardrobe, along with Rory’s breeches and coat. The party now seemed like something that had happened in another lifetime. Her shoes and undergarments lay on a nearby chair. Amy wondered who would come take these to be washed. She ran a longing finger over the silk and debated smuggling the costumes back into the TARDIS. The palace was in such a state of disarray now, surely no-one would notice. Amy began to look around for something in which to conceal the clothes; she couldn’t exactly wander about the palace with an armload of red and purple silk.

“Rory,” she called, but there was no answer. Surprised, Amy went into the loo. Empty. She checked the anteroom. Likewise unoccupied. Amy hurried out to the little courtyard their suite overlooked. No Rory. “Where is that idiot?” she muttered to herself. With a sigh of frustration, she gathered up all their luggage and staggered like an over-laden camel down to the Grand Foyer.

The Doctor stood outside the TARDIS with River, tapping his foot impatiently.

“I can’t find Rory,” Amy said, dumping the luggage on the marble floor. “He left me to hump all this gear myself—” Her mobile phone began to bleep.

Amy stopped complaining and fished into her pocket. “Where are you, Stupid?” she said.

“I’m at the hospital,” Rory said. He was speaking very quietly, as if he didn’t want to be overheard, and Amy could hear what sounded like a lot of kids shouting in the background. “Come here—there’s a children’s play area on the ground floor. Bring River and the Doctor. But don’t make a fuss—be as quiet as you can.”

“What’s going on?” asked Amy, clutching the phone more tightly.

Still keeping his voice low, Rory said, “You’re not going to believe this.”

(xv)

“She’s lying,” River said.

“Of course she’s lying,” the Doctor responded. He stood watching while River grabbed her bags. She tossed a heavy rucksack to him; he caught it with one hand. “Is that all?” he asked.

“I travel light.”

On their way down to the foyer, River said, “She might spend the rest of her life imprisoned for a crime she’s not responsible for.”

“Yes, obviously,” the Doctor said.

“She’s trying to protect someone,” River said. “Which means Iris, or maybe Hector.” Almost to herself, she added, “People don’t usually have themselves locked up deliberately unless…” She thought for another moment. “Unless she knows who _is_ responsible and is taking the fall for them. In that case, it can only be Iris.”

The Doctor didn’t answer.

River said, “Don’t you care?”

“No,” the Doctor said. “We leave now, Lady Bianca goes to prison, Vareda goes on, same as ever. Volcano Day averted, end of story.”

“Someone tried to kill you.”

“And didn’t succeed,” the Doctor said. “Same old me, not even regenerated.”

“You don’t care if an innocent woman goes to prison?”

He stopped short and turned so quickly that River collided with him, his face close enough to kiss, gray eyes boring right into her. River closed her mind, but sensed the Doctor had caught a swift look in that one unguarded moment.

“Do you?” he asked. “If it means the planet’s civilization survives? It seems a small price to pay, especially since Lady Bianca seems willing to pay it herself.” He turned and continued his rapid passage through the corridor, River alongside him. She heard him say to himself, “Not another one.” She didn’t need to ask what he was talking about.

In the Grand Foyer, they found the TARDIS, and River stowed her gear inside.

“Where _are_ those two?” the Doctor muttered, checking his watch.

Amy appeared then, looking very put-upon, carrying four large bags. River hastened to assist the younger woman.

“I can’t find Rory,” Amy complained. “He left me to hump all this gear myself—” Her mobile phone began to bleep, and she fished into her skirt pocket. “Where are you, Stupid?” she said. After a moment, she clutched the phone more tightly and said, “What’s going on?” A few seconds later, she put away the phone, her expression bewildered.

“What is it?” asked River.

“Rory’s at the hospital,” said Amy. “He said to come over, but quietly—don’t make a fuss. It sounds like he’s found something.”

(xvi)

Getting into the hospital had been easy; finding a laundry room full of white uniforms equally so. Rory located a suit in his size, the tunic longer than the shirt on his Leadworth Hospital scrubs, and he put it on so that the green crescent moon was over his heart.

It took him slightly longer to locate a staff lounge, where he casually nicked one of those little hand-held computers. On Earth, of course, he’d have taken a clipboard. Once he looked reasonably authentic, Rory took the lift up to the children’s ward.

He strode down the corridor to the big, bright room he remembered from the arrival on Vareda. The place was empty, but a young girl was there, cleaning, putting away toys.

“Hey,” said Rory.

“Hello,” she smiled. “Looking for something?”

Heart pounding, Rory said, “I’m kind of new here… this is my first day.”

“Oh, I just started last week!” the girl giggled. “Ward assistant, but they said I could move up to—”

Rory interrupted as smoothly as possible, “I’m looking for a patient named—” He pretended to consult the small computer— “Miranda Escalus. Do you know which room is hers?”

“Oh, the kids are all down in the play-yard now,” the girl said. “Have you been there? It’s on the ground level, just beyond the canteen. Miranda’s out there with the rest of them.”

“Thanks.” Rory slipped away before the girl could ask any more questions.

He and Amy had eaten at the canteen after the Doctor’s surgery, and Rory found it again with no difficulty. A helpful sign pointed to the entrance to the children’s outdoor play area. This was a wide, green expanse along one of the hospital walls, a shady rectangle enclosed by tall trees and fragrant with the scent of flowers from a nearby garden. At least a dozen children climbed on a jungle gym, flew down slides, pushed each other on swings, and played an energetic game of something that resembled football. This thoroughly jolly scene could have come from almost anywhere on Earth.

A few adults sat on benches around the perimeter, looking after kids who were on crutches or in wheelchairs. A couple of uniformed attendants supervised the children’s play. It took Rory a few moments to identify Miranda—he’d been looking at the wheelchairs, expecting her to be in one of them, and he jolted with shock when she ran past him in pursuit of a flying ball.

Rory had previously put Miranda’s age at about nine or ten; now he saw she was easily twelve, almost thirteen, on the brink of young womanhood. She was tall—like Iris—with the same auburn hair, growing out into a lustrous cap. Her eyes were the same honey color—wide, fringed with newly re-grown lashes. Her skin glowed with a sheen of good health, and her loud laughter rang out through the play area as she ran, kicking the ball with strong, healthy legs.

On one of the benches sat Iris, watching her daughter, hands clasped together on her knee, her expression one of unsurpassable joy.

Rory took a few casual steps backward until he was inside the hospital building again. With shaking hands, he pulled out his mobile and rang Amy.

(xvii)

The other three arrived with the Doctor in the lead, Amy and River hurrying behind him. When Rory spotted them, he held a shushing finger to his lips.

“Out there,” he said quietly. “It’s Miranda.”

“Miranda’s dead!” said Amy.

“Who told us that?” Rory asked. “Lady Bianca, who lied about attacking the Doctor. Miranda’s out there right now, running around with the other kids. You should see her.”

The Doctor stepped casually into the doorway and watched. Unwilling to wait, River and Amy crowded behind him, looking over his shoulders. Rory sighed and muttered, “So much for the brilliant career in espionage.”

Behind Rory, a man’s voice said, “So, you know.”

River, Amy, and Rory whirled around to see Hector standing behind them. The Doctor didn’t turn, however; he continued staring at the kids. He walked slowly into the play area, watching Miranda run and play ball.

Hector pushed his way past Rory, following the Doctor, and they all went and stood in the sun-dappled shade of the wide play-yard. Iris noticed the newcomers and sprang up off her bench, throwing protective arms around Miranda. The girl looked startled and frightened.

“Mummy, what’s wrong?” she said.

The Doctor had reached Iris. He stared down at Miranda, and Amy could see his mounting rage from the set of his shoulders.

“Who did this?” he asked, his voice grating and horrible.

Hector had motioned to an attendant, and the adults began to round up the other children, steering them out of the play-yard, casting worried looks back over their shoulders.

Iris said, “She’s my daughter. I love her. I couldn’t let her die!”

The Doctor turned to Hector, and the look on his face frightened Amy more than anything she’d witnessed in all her space-time travels.

“You gave her my blood,” the Doctor said. “You transfused her. That’s what the attack was about. It had nothing to do with the codex. You wanted my blood, to cure Miranda.”

Hector said, “It was Lady Bianca. She researched the Time Lords; she read about your ability to heal, to regenerate new body tissues. She knew you’d be at the temple opening, so she programmed the pit trap with your DNA. This was her doing, Doctor. We didn’t know what she’d done until she came to Miranda’s room with a syringe of your blood. We thought it was a drug that would… well, that would end things peacefully for Miranda. But it was your blood. By the time we realized what she’d done, Miranda was already healing. And look at her. Look at her now.” Hector’s voice shook with emotion. “How can that be wrong?”

River said venomously, “I can think of many reasons why this is wrong!”

The Doctor told Hector, “You have no idea what you’ve done.”

Rory said, “When did Lady Bianca…? We cleaned everything, all the blood; I was there, I made sure—” His voice rose in guilty indignation.

River exploded, “She drugged me! The tea—she put something in my tea—I should have known; I’d never have fallen asleep otherwise! She drugged me, and she drew the Doctor’s blood while I was sleeping!”

Iris was holding Miranda so tightly that the girl whimpered in pain. “My mother is willing to spend the rest of her life in prison to save Miranda! While all of you wittered on about morals and fixed points, my daughter was dying!”

“She’s still going to die,” the Doctor said. “You can’t stop that.” He glanced at his watch. “She was transfused… twelve hours ago? Eighteen?” There wasn’t a trace of pity in his voice or expression when he said, “It’s just a matter of moments now.”

“No.” Iris shook her head violently. “No, she’s alive now, she’s healthy; she’s healed.”

“My blood cells would have devoured her cancer,” the Doctor said. “And the white cells, the immune cells, would look at Miranda’s blood, human blood, as another invasive organism. Every cell in her body is a threat to be destroyed.”

“No,” Iris whispered.

“Mummy, I feel hot,” said Miranda, and indeed her cheeks had begun to grow flushed.

“You might want to let go of her,” the Doctor said.

“Stop this,” Iris demanded. “Stop this—it’s your blood; you can stop it!”

“I’m sorry,” the Doctor said. “There’s nothing I can do.”

“Mummy,” Miranda wailed, “Mummy, I’m burning—it hurts!”

“You monster,” Iris hissed at the Doctor.

“Everyone, step away,” the Doctor said.

“ _Mummy!_ ” Miranda screamed, her face now as red as a boiled lobster.

“What, what’s happening?” Amy babbled, staggering backward, clutching Rory’s hand.

River said, “The Doctor’s blood is targeting the human tissue in Miranda’s body—now it’s trying to trigger a regeneration, but Miranda’s human—she doesn’t have that ability.”

“Help her!” Iris screamed. She tried to throw herself on the Doctor, but River tackled the other woman and pushed her aside.

Miranda’s wail rose into a long, unbroken banshee-like shriek. Her hands and face were beginning to glow with a sickly yellow-orange light. Suddenly her back arched, her limbs splayed out, and fire burst from the collar and cuffs of her tunic; it was as if she’d become a small human torch.

“NO!” screamed Iris. She tried to lunge for Miranda, but River held her fast.

The fire died away, leaving a grotesque, child-sized skeleton, blackened and charred, hanging in midair for a moment. And then even the bones disintegrated, crumbling onto the smooth lawn like a collapsing tower of black ash.

**To be continued…**


	5. What A Fool Believes--Chapter Four

_Chapter Four_

For a few moments, the only sound was Iris, her breathing ragged and harsh. With an inarticulate moan, she dropped to her knees and began sifting through the black ash with her fingers, as if somehow she would find her daughter in the pile of burnt carbon.

The Doctor turned to Dr. Griffith, who was watching Iris with an agonized expression.

“Who knows?” asked the Doctor.

“What—who knows what?”

“About your little _experiment_ ,” the Doctor spat.

“Me—and Iris—and Lady Bianca, naturally,” Dr. Griffith said.

“No-one else?” asked the Doctor.

“Nobody.”

The Doctor was staring at the other man, his head weaving back and forth. “You’re lying,” he said.

“I—” Dr. Griffith stammered.

“Who else knows?”

Dr. Griffith was still waffling. Without warning, the Doctor’s hands shot up, his index fingers driving into the other man’s temples.

“Aaagh!” Dr. Griffith shouted, his face screwing up in pain. The Doctor only needed a moment to find what he needed, and he released Dr. Griffith so quickly that the scientist staggered back a few steps.

Now the Doctor’s anger had darkened and hardened into a smoldering wrath. Amy couldn’t bear to look at his face—the face of a monster.

“Gather your staff,” the Doctor ordered. “All six of them—everyone who knows. Now.”

Dr. Griffith hastened to do the Doctor’s bidding, looking as though he might be physically ill at any moment.

Amy whispered to River, “What’s the Doctor going to do?”

River said, “He’s going to wipe their memories.”

(ii)

There were five Mollisians on Dr. Griffith’s research staff and one Moschatan, a young man with those three golden spots over his eyebrows. All six technicians looked anxious at this abrupt summons.

The Doctor was pacing; his hands, behind his back, were clenched into hard fists.

“Show me what you’ve been doing,” he ordered.

At a nod from Dr. Griffith, one of the women brought up an image on a computer screen, the twisting double helix of a DNA molecule.

“That’s mine,” the Doctor said. “You’re analyzing my DNA.”

The female technician nodded, mute and terrified, looking to Dr. Griffith for support or aid or comfort. But Dr. Griffith had no reassurance to offer.

From another side of the room, Amy, Rory, and River watched the tableaux unfold. Amy and Rory clutched hands; River looked as solemn and dispassionate as an executioner.

The Doctor was addressing Dr. Griffith. “What happened?” he asked. “You saw the effect my blood was having on Miranda, so you took another sample, this one for yourself?”

“I—” Dr. Griffith began, but the Doctor interrupted him.

“What for?” the Doctor asked. “The cure for anything? Immortality in a test tube? All for the greater glory of Dr. Hector Griffith?”

“I wanted to help people,” Dr. Griffith said, his dark skin gleaming with sweat. “It’s all I ever wanted.”

With a harsh laugh, the Doctor said, “You can’t lie to me—I’ve looked inside your mind, remember?”

Dr. Griffith glared at him.

“Right,” the Doctor said, turning to address the six technicians. “And how many of you haven’t been able to resist talking about this to your friends? Your family?”

“They all work under a strict nondisclosure agreement,” Dr. Griffith said.

“Oh, silly pieces of paper never stopped anyone from talking, especially about a magical elixir, immune cells that can cure any disease.” The Doctor reached out his hands, placing his fingers against the temples of the nearest technician. The young man gasped and went rigid. A moment later, the Doctor stepped away. The technician staggered and almost fell.

“What am I doing here?” he asked, bewildered. “Dr. Griffith? What’s going on? I—I can’t remember.”

“Good lad,” the Doctor said, clapping a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Off you go now, back to work.”

After the young man left, Dr. Griffith growled, “What are you _doing_?”

The Doctor approached a middle-aged woman and put his fingers on her temples. A moment later, he released his hands.

“Had a nice little chin-wag with your husband, did you?” he said. Turning to Dr. Griffith, he ordered, “Have him brought here.”

“No—not Claudio, don’t hurt him!” the young woman cried out.

“And who did _he_ tell?” the Doctor asked. He went down the line, one by one. Four of the six technicians had not spoken of the DNA analysis to anyone, so the Doctor wiped their memories of the past twenty-four hours and sent them on their way. With the other two, he waited until the female technician’s husband and another technician’s sister had been brought in for questioning. The sister had said nothing, but Claudio, the husband, had been loose-lipped, and another five people had to be brought in and mind-read before the Doctor was satisfied that the secrets of his blood had not traveled any further.

By the time all this was done, Amy was exhausted and feeling queasy. She realized she was seeing a side of the Doctor that until now, she’d only glimpsed at odd moments. She hadn’t guessed how carefully he’d concealed this aspect of his nature. No, not concealed, she thought—reined in. This anger, this righteous fury, had always been part of him, but now he was allowing it to take the driver’s seat.

“Am I next?” Dr. Griffith asked after the befuddled technicians and their equally confused retinues had departed the conference room.

“Not yet,” the Doctor said, his lip curling up a bit over his teeth. “Show me where the samples are kept.”

Dr. Griffith led them into another part of the research lab. From beneath a hood, he drew out a small rack containing a dozen glass test tubes.

Without any further debate, the Doctor carried the rack over to another counter and threw it down into a sink. The glass shattered into fragments, the liquid within each tube spilling out and running down the drain. The Doctor splashed alcohol into the sink and used his sonic to ignite the chemical, which exploded upward with a startling _whomp_ and a burst of blue flame.

“Right,” he said. “Now, your data banks.”

In another room sat a small cluster of sophisticated hardware, computer drives mounted in a series of metal stands. From the look of things, a single monitor allowed access to the system. The Doctor sat before the monitor, waved his sonic at the screen, and began tapping keys on a glowing keypad.

“I’m deleting all your data,” he said.

“There’s more than just the data on your blood,” Dr. Griffith said, sweating. “Decades of work—other projects—Doctor, please, people’s lives are—”

The Doctor aimed the sonic at the rack of hard drives. With a loud bang, like a gun being fired, the entire system went dead. The lights stopped blinking, the monitor went dark. Dr. Griffith made a small, high-pitched noise in his throat.

“That research could have saved people’s lives,” he said.

“I’ll leave you to explain to them why it was destroyed,” the Doctor said.

Beside Amy, Rory shifted and said, “What, like he doesn’t have all that stuff backed up somewhere?”

Dr. Griffith jolted, and he shot Rory a furtive, murderous look. Amy glared at her husband; not that she didn’t understand the Doctor’s rage, but did Rory have to go and make everything worse?

“Even on Earth, we back up our data,” Rory went on. “Redundant systems…” He faltered for a moment, and then shrugged, “It’s not exactly rocket science.”

“Ha-ha, Rory the Roman’s on a roll today!” the Doctor exclaimed, clapping his hands together once.

River said, “Doctor, that data could be backed up anywhere on the planet—Vareda’s network includes everything, every computer, every mobile…” Like Rory, she seemed to realize that giving the Doctor more ammunition might not be the best thing. Her lips formed a silent “Oh,” as if she’d just realized something of staggering importance—and not anything good, either. “Oh,” she whispered.

“Volcano Day,” the Doctor said, striding from the room.

“You don’t have to do this!” River shouted, running after him.

“Oh, yes I do,” he said, walking even faster, his companions racing to keep up with him. “All anyone would need is one image of my DNA, one file, one molecule, and they could clone themselves an army of Time Lords. Not on my watch,” he said, aiming his sonic at the controls of the nearest lift.

Dr. Griffith had come up behind them. “Stop,” he ordered. “You’ve done enough damage already—whatever you have planned, I forbid you—”

Hector’s words stopped when the Doctor’s hands snapped up to his temples. In an instant, the Doctor had erased everything Dr. Griffith had learned about Time Lord genetics. When the Doctor released his hands, Dr. Griffith’s eyes rolled up into his head, and he fell with a heavy thud to the floor.

“That sorts the loose ends,” the Doctor said, and he stepped into the lift without looking back.

(iii)

By now, dusk had gathered around the capital city, the beautiful lavender dusk full of a heady perfume; high overhead, the palamon trees were beginning to flower. Crowds of people milled about the city streets, exiting and entering tram cars. Very faintly, Amy heard music and laughter: it seemed the New Year’s celebration hadn’t ended—yet.

The Doctor strode with single-minded focus over the bridge to the royal palace. Stewards looked up as the Time Lord came whirling through, his friends running alongside him. The queen’s staff surely had heard about the events at the hospital; one tried to halt the Doctor, but a single look from him, full of cold steel, cowed the steward into dumb paralysis. Nobody else hindered the time travelers as they rushed inside the blue box.

Amy found her voice once they were inside the machine. “What are you going to do?” she asked.

The Doctor didn’t answer, setting coordinates and throwing levers.

“You don’t have to do this,” River said, her blue eyes full of concern. “The chances that any of them could use your DNA—”

“Vareda has cloning technology,” the Doctor said. “You said it yourself—data files with my genetic code could be anywhere on the planet.”

“So, how do you get rid of them?” Rory asked.

The Doctor said, “Blow it out.”

“Blow out what?” asked Amy.

“The power. All of it.”

Amy and Rory stared at him. Amy’s gaze jerked over toward River, whose resigned expression suggested she had already guessed the Doctor’s plans.

“The whole _planet’s_ power?” asked Rory. “Isn’t that a bit overkill?”

“It’s the only way.”

Amy said, “Doctor, you can’t do that.”

He pointed a finger at her. “Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do, Amelia.”

The TARDIS shook and rumbled as it materialized. The Doctor opened the doors and bounced out, as if in anticipation of any new adventure.

“This is it,” he said.

Amy stared around the massive silver structure, plunked in the middle of a desolate brown desert. This must be the other side of Vareda, where it was still daylight. The sun beat down with a ferocious, unforgiving blaze of heat.

“It’s a furnace!” Rory gasped.

“The equatorial region,” River nodded. “We’re on Vareda’s smallest landmass—uninhabitable desert, over twenty hours of daylight every day. A perfect spot for a solar power station.”

The station itself was quiet and serene, no humming of powerful machinery, just an occasional soft click from overhead as the vast solar panels rotated, following the sun’s path across the sky.

“Where is everyone?” asked Amy, looking about.

“Nobody works here,” River said. “It’s too hot for human habitation—the station is fully automated.”

The Doctor strode around a metal catwalk that circled the main column of the plant. Once they were out of the sun and into the shade, the temperature became slightly more bearable. Still, Amy and Rory were dripping sweat. They followed River and the Doctor down a long flight of steps and around a second, lower catwalk. The Doctor was looking for something.

“Ah,” he said, voice rich with satisfaction. “Gotcha.”

As his companions watched, he used the sonic to open a panel in the wall of the column. Amy peered inside. She saw nothing except what appeared to be a dozen tall, slim columns of clear glass.

“What’s that?” she asked uneasily.

“Crystal,” said River. “Varedan clear quartz crystal, the same stuff you saw in the Moschatan pit trap. It conducts the electricity from the solar panels through underground power cables and out to the rest of the planet.”

“Mind your ears,” the Doctor said, and aimed the sonic straight into the heart of the tower. Amy and Rory clamped their hands over their ears, barely blotting out the explosive sound of the crystal columns shattering, as one by one, the Doctor destroyed the plant’s power conductors.

“Right,” he said, pocketing the sonic device, his face still hard, eyes blank. His friends stumbled after him, up to the overhead catwalk and back toward the TARDIS. The last thing Amy heard before she entered the ship was the forlorn clicking of the solar panels, still moving, but impotent now, machines unaware that the energy they gathered from Stellata was going nowhere.

(iv)

“I want to go home,” Amy said, her voice very quiet. She didn’t look at the Doctor as she spoke. She clung tightly to Rory’s hand, unwilling to let go of the one secure, stable thing in her universe. “To Leadworth.” Beside her, Rory nodded.

“Yes,” the Doctor said after a moment. “Yes, all right. Of course.”

Amy couldn’t help a certain amount of anti-climax when the TARDIS materialized outside her house.

“What day is this?” she asked, staring around the starlit garden.

“It’s your wedding day,” the Doctor said. “Well, night, actually. Twenty-sixth of June, 2010. You’ve been gone about fifteen minutes.”

“Everyone’ll still be at the village hall, then,” Amy said.

Rory emerged behind her. He’d fetched the rest of their things from their bedroom in the TARDIS. Over his arm he carried a swath of gray fabric—the morning suit he’d worn at the wedding—and a long length of white silk. Amy’s heart compressed when she recognized her wedding gown.

“I’ll get these inside,” he told Amy, not looking at the Doctor.

From within the TARDIS, River’s voice called, “Amy, could you help me with your luggage?”

Amy took two of the heavy bags, and River took the other two. Once they were inside the house, out of the Doctor’s earshot, Amy asked, “What happens on Vareda? After—after what he did?”

“Do you really want to know?” River kept her voice quiet.

Amy debated, then decided knowing the truth was more bearable than whatever apocalyptic scenario her imagination would concoct.

“Collapse,” River said. “Panic, violence, looting, anarchy, starvation, illness. Without electric power, half the planet’s population dies.”

“Oh, my God,” Amy whispered. “Did it ever—you know, get any better?”

“It takes a few decades,” said River. “Prince Lambert had gone into hiding, but after his mother’s death, he comes back and restores peace. The greatest survival rates will be among the Moschatans, because they have a longer experience of living without technology. Prince Lambert works with them, and the descendants of the original clan elders will take over leadership of the planet. About seventy years after Volcano Day, the crystal towers in the solar plant will be rebuilt and electricity restored. By then, Prince Lambert will be dead, and Professor tarq-Volsica’s granddaughter becomes First Clan Elder, the new leader of Vareda. But so much of the Mollisian civilization will be lost.”

“What about Dr. Griffith?” Amy asked. “What happened to him? Did he survive?”

“He does,” said River. “The Doctor never wiped Iris’s or Bianca’s memories, so Hector knew what had happened. He understood that Vareda’s tragedy was their own doing—his and Iris’s and Bianca’s. Hector became the planet’s historian—he made it his penance, almost, to write down everything he could remember. He never mentioned the Doctor in his writings, but later Varedans would refer to the collapse as ‘the Time of Great Shame.’ New Year’s Day would always be marked as a day of mourning.”

“Wow,” Amy swallowed. “What about the Doctor—will he be okay?”

“He’ll be fine,” River assured the younger woman. “As angry as he ever gets, he never stays that way. It will take him a while to let go of this, though.”

They brought Amy and Rory’s luggage upstairs. Amy stood with hands on her hips, surveying her messy bedroom. “I guess we’ll have a proper honeymoon after all.”

“Enjoy it.” River hugged her. She stepped away then, looking about Amy’s room with a strange, wistful expression.

“What’s wrong?” asked Amy.

“Nothing,” River said, giving her another hug.

“So, what about you and the Doctor?” asked Amy. “What now?”

“Oh, same as ever,” River breezed, tossing her head a bit. “Spoilers, and meeting up in the wrong order, and more spoilers.”

“Will I see him again?” Amy could hear her voice trembling. “And you?”

“Count on it,” River smiled.

They heard footsteps on the stairs, and Rory’s voice. “Amy?”

“I’m here,” she said.

“I put my suit in the car, but it’ll look weird if your parents don’t find _this_ here.” He handed the gown to Amy.

She put the frock back onto its hanger and hung it once again on her wardrobe door. How long ago it now seemed that she’d dressed for her wedding. She told Rory, “Let me pack some clean things, all right?”

“Sure.” Rory took his bags. “I’ll be down in the car. Don’t be too long—our train leaves Gloucester in two hours.”

“Okay,” Amy said.

“Where are you going?” River asked as she watched Amy unpack and repack her bags.

“South of France,” Amy laughed. “It’ll seem pretty dull after Vareda. But in a good way, I hope.”

She thumped down the stairs, to the front door. River said, “Amy!”

“What?”

“You should say goodbye to him.”

Amy hesitated, then said, “Get these out to Rory, okay? Tell him I’ll be a minute.”

While River took Amy’s bags to the car, Amy went back through the house and outside to the garden. She replayed in her mind all the times the blue box had appeared here, each time changing her life irrevocably.

Inside, the Doctor was fussing with the TARDIS console, as usual. If he didn’t look his comforting, familiar self, at least he no longer appeared so full of vengeful wrath.

“Hey,” Amy said. “We’re leaving for Gloucester.”

“Gloucester?” he asked, brow wrinkling. “You’re going to honeymoon in Gloucester?”

Amy laughed. “Train from Gloucester to London, and then to Provence.”

“Lovely at this time of year.”

“I want to, you know, show Rory where Vincent lived. Show him the church. And stuff. The places he never got to see.”

The Doctor smiled, a hint of his normal warmth returning. “It’ll be fantastic,” he said.

Amy said, “Um, you know, I still want to go with you,” she said. “And so does Rory—don’t think that just cos we’re married, we never want to see you again. We owe you everything—we wouldn’t even _be_ married if you hadn’t—”

He made a self-deprecating noise, looking abashed. “Amy, you don’t owe me anything.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, I need to run—Rory’ll be in a strop if we miss our train.” She began to circle the console, to at least give the Doctor a farewell hug, but he held up his hands in a warding gesture.

“Please don’t touch me,” he said quietly, as though he were a medieval leper or plague victim—unclean.

“Oh—right. Sorry. Well, later, then.” Amy turned and ran from the TARDIS, blinking away tears.

River, standing outside, said, “Are you all right? Amy?”

“Sort of. Later, River. Take care of him. Tell him to look us up when he’s ready for company again.”

“Try and stop me.” River went inside the ship, the doors closed, and the dematerialization noises began. Amy stood watching the blue box fade away. She turned then, dragging heavy feet towards the house, so lost in thought that she didn’t see the small woman standing in the doorway until she was right on top of her.

“Oh!” Amy exclaimed. “Who are you?”

“This is the girl,” the woman said. “She’s the one.”

Amy felt something cold touch the back of her head. She blinked. The woman was gone. And then, the odd little incident simply vanished from her mind, as if it had never happened. Amy went through the house and out to the drive, where Rory waited in his familiar red Mini.

“Hey,” he said, kissing her. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” said Amy.

“You look… peculiar.”

“Just a little weirded out right now.”

“Try to sleep,” he urged, staring the motor. “We’ll be in Gloucester before you know it.”

“All right.” Amy pushed back the seat, stifling a yawn. “D’you have the tickets? And our passports?”

Rory patted the glove box. “Right here.”

“My Rory,” Amy smiled. “You always get everything sorted.” The car began moving, and Amy slid into effortless slumber. Memories of the past days tumbled together in a haphazard dream: a woman’s angelic voice sang as Amy, Rory, and the Doctor chased an Egyptian goddess through the starship _Orient Express_ , and then the ship’s corridors opened out into the expanse of Vareda’s green savannas. Amy saw the Great Temple, heard the Blue Danube, saw dancers in eighteenth century costumes whirling about the plains. Miranda, healthy and strong, kicked a ball across Vareda’s desert, beneath an unforgiving sun. Amy shaded her eyes, looking up at the sky, and it seemed she could see the face of a woman looking back at her, a woman with a strange black patch over one eye.

“Sleep now,” the woman said, and Amy’s mind sank into the comforting blackness of oblivion.

**To be continued…**


	6. What A Fool Believes--Epilogue

# Epilogue

The afternoon sun was shining when the TARDIS materialized behind River’s house. The day was warm and drowsy, the garden full of the scent of River’s autumn roses. She paused to look over the flowers, clucking at their neglected state. “I need to do some pruning.”

The Doctor gave the house and the garden a curious examination. “It’s nicer than Storm Cage,” he said.

“After so many years of rain, I opted for a semi-arid climate,” River laughed. “Lots of sun here. These are desert roses, very hardy. They smell wonderful, and they barely need any water.”

The Doctor followed her into the small, secluded bungalow, an anonymous, unremarkable-looking house, detached from its neighbors, which were arrayed in terraces down the side of a hill. In the distance were more small houses, gardens, a few scrubby trees, and further away, the silver gleam of a lake or reservoir.

River had chosen her home with deliberate care, a time and place where her complicated past were unlikely to cause problems. The neighborhood’s population was itinerant, most of the people working either in agriculture or for a government installation that monitored the region’s weather and wildlife. Most people accepted River’s frequent absences without question or even much curiosity.

Inside was cool and quiet. River’s housekeeper had been in earlier, adjusting the climate control and stocking the kitchen with fresh food. River switched on her home computer to retrieve her messages, smiling as the Doctor explored the bungalow.

“It’s not the TARDIS, but it’s home,” she said.

“It’s… lacking personality,” the Doctor said.

“What did you expect?” River laughed. “Something scandalous, I hope?”

“It doesn’t feel like you,” he said.

“It’s just where I hang my hat, sweetie,” River said. “My real life is lived elsewhere.” She’d chosen the décor with the aim of keeping her identity concealed: the furniture and wall hangings, attractive but bland, could have belonged to anyone. To River, though, this space was precious, a valued sanctum. After years in a ten by thirteen prison cell, the bungalow felt like a palace.

The Doctor said, “Whose room is this?”

“What, the small one?”

“Yes.” He tried—and failed—to keep a note of jealousy out of his voice.

“It’s the spare room,” River said, now scrolling down her list of new messages.

He emerged into her main living area. “Spare room?”

“Believe it or not, I have company sometimes,” River said. “Usually just colleagues or friends.” He still appeared miffed, so River added, “I wouldn’t put a lover in my spare bedroom, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

The Doctor turned around in circles a few times, then asked, “So, you have an actual academic appointment?” He seemed to have forgotten about the sleeping arrangements.

“Would you like to see my credentials?”

“You make that sound so dirty,” he said.

River said, “Yes, I’m gainfully and honestly employed, but you’ll have to wait to learn the details of how it all happened.”

“Last time I met you, you were still in prison.”

“You’re really jumping around, then,” River said. “Prison was a while ago for me. When was the last time you saw me?”

“The Pandorica,” he said. “Which I know you’ve done, too. What was the last time for you?”

“Vikings,” she told him. “Ring any bells?”

“Not yet,” he said.

“It’s still early days for you,” River said.

“Fairly early,” the Doctor hedged.

“You still have so much to look forward to. I’m a little jealous of that.” River tried to maneuver in for a kiss, but he stepped away.

“Why not?” she asked.

“One, I still have no idea who you are,” he said. “That note I’m going to write to myself told me I could trust you for one night. That’s hardly a ringing vote of confidence.”

“Fair enough,” River said, though she was keenly disappointed: her bedroom was right down the hall, they had the place to themselves, and she had no plans for the next few days. “What’s the second reason?”

Looking miserable, he said, “I don’t deserve it.”

“Oh, sweetie,” she said. “Don’t do this to yourself.”

“I ended a civilization today,” he said. “You think it’s something I should take frivolously? And celebrate by—by—?” He waved one hand, making a vague shape in the air.

“By shagging your missus?” River smiled sadly. “I never said it would be a celebration.”

“Celebration, happiness, comfort…” He shook his head. “I don’t deserve any of that.”

Raising an eyebrow, River said, “Do you think what you did on Vareda was wrong? They crossed a line with you that, as far as I know, nobody has ever crossed without regretting it.” He still looked miserable, and River continued, “What did you see in Hector’s mind that made you so angry?”

The Doctor said, “His plans to clone my blood and make it into a cure for any illness. As the owner of the patent, he’d have become the richest man in ten galaxies. Vareda would become a great center of healing, an intergalactic Lourdes, with Dr. Hector Griffith as its patron saint.”

“But it wouldn’t work—you saw what happened to Miranda.”

“Even after watching her burn to death, Hector was thinking, scheming, trying to work out how the Time Lord immune cells could be altered to cure illness without turning against the host species. And he’d almost got it right. He was close, River. So very close.”

Shocked, River said, “He used Miranda as a guinea pig? He loved her so much! Like his own daughter.”

“That wouldn’t have stopped him from trying to make a profit on her suffering,” the Doctor said, looking revolted. River knew that of all possible vices, he hated greed the most.

“Don’t punish yourself, then,” she chided. “What you did was—was—” She sighed. “A necessary evil.” He made a noise of protest, but River said, “What choice did you have? Let Hector use your blood to acquire the power of life and death? He would’ve altered your DNA to engineer immortality for anyone willing to pay the price. The information had to be destroyed, Doctor. And there was only one way to do that.”

“People died,” he said.

“Yes, obviously,” she responded. “It was a fixed point; it couldn’t be avoided.” River could see that nothing she said would make any difference, nor was it likely to get the Doctor in bed with her. So she said, “If it’s punishment you want, there’s an empty cell in Storm Cage. Go lock yourself up for a few centuries.”

The Doctor gave her a look, and River could see his thoughts, plain as day: he was already in prison, a prison he carried around inside himself wherever he went.

“Don’t,” she said, her mind vaulting forward in a sudden lurch of intuition.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t you dare wipe your own memory of what we did on Vareda! That was one of the most beautiful nights of my life. Don’t try to pretend it never happened because you feel like playing the martyr.”

The torment in his eyes gave way to miserable guilt, and River could see that was exactly what he’d been planning, that he felt he didn’t deserve even the memory of happiness, however brief, however fleeting.

“Promise me you won’t,” River said.

“I won’t,” he finally relented. “But I’m going to put it in a, a back room for a while. I need to be able to think without… distractions.”

“Is that what I am?” River put her hands on her hips. “A distraction?”

He touched her nose. “You’re an enigma.”

River knew she wasn’t going to change his mind. “Go on, then. When you’re done punishing yourself, when you’re ready to open that room in your mind, come find me.”

He said nothing for a moment. They’d reached an impasse of sorts.

“I should go,” he said at last.

“It’s your call.” River followed him out to the garden, wishing they weren’t going to part on this miserable note. “Amy said to look her up. I hope you’re not planning to run out on them as well?”

“No,” he said. “No, of course not.” He stopped in his tracks, turned back toward River, turned again toward the TARDIS, and back to River again, as if he couldn’t make up his mind whether to stay or to go. “What about you, River Song? When we meet again, will I find out who you really are?”

“It’s coming soon,” she said. “You’ll get a sign that’ll be unmistakable. And that’s how it starts.”

He lifted his eyebrows. “And?”

“Sorry, sweetie,” she laughed, but inwardly she cringed, knowing the emotional tumult that awaited him. “It’s long and complicated, and if any of it changes… well, the consequences wouldn’t be pretty.”

“On that cryptic note—” He opened the TARDIS door.

River blew him a kiss. “If you ever get lonely, you know where I am.”

He nodded, briefly tapping the doorframe. Then he was inside, the engines groaning, the blue box fading from view. River waited until the breeze caused by its departure died down before returning to the house and her interrupted life.

(ii)

He tried solitude—uninhabited islands, barren asteroids, the bottoms of fathoms-deep caverns. He tried crowds—bustling spaceports, sporting events, the intergalactic circus. He tried busy, he tried bland, he tried sophisticated, he tried simple. He tried cities, jungles, suburbs, farms, empty prairies. He went everywhere, looking for something he knew he’d never find—forgiveness, peace, maybe just a sense of reassurance that he wasn’t turning into the kind of monster against which he’d been fighting for so long.

At last, he realized that he’d never find the answers to his questions anywhere but inside himself, and that he might as well stop traversing time and space in a futile search for the intangible. Besides, he was getting lonely. And bored.

He was on Aleph Minor, wandering the Great Bazaar, looking at things without really seeing them, when this epiphany struck. The Doctor turned and made his way through the slow-moving crowds, past the vendors, the street performers, the mobs of merchants and tourists. In an alley off the main concourse he’d materialized the TARDIS, concealing it behind a couple of nondescript tarps.

When he lifted the canvas, he froze. Stuck to the front of the time machine was a square envelope, as blue as the TARDIS itself, with one word printed on the front: DOCTOR. He realized his name had been printed on a clear label, typed in an anonymous typeface in capital letters. And on the back of the envelope, on the flap, he found the number 1.

The Doctor glanced all about the alleyway. “Hello?” he said, but there was no answer. He felt a funny little thrill: whoever had left this message knew exactly when and where to find him, which was odd in and of itself—he’d chosen Aleph Minor at random, scarcely two hours earlier.

He went into the ship and locked the door before he opened the envelope. Inside, he found a square card with a set of coordinates printed on it. He didn’t need the TARDIS computer to tell him the destination was Earth—Utah, to be precise—on twenty-second April, 2011. There was nothing else in the envelope, and no indication of who’d left it on the TARDIS door, but clearly it was meant for him. He frowned, then broke into laughter: was River summoning him again, in her usual imperious manner? Excited, the Doctor bounced over to the console.

The exact location of the rendezvous turned out to be a small diner. The Doctor emerged from the ship to find himself in alleyway behind the restaurant, near the loo and a rear exit. The back wall of the diner was painted with a mural, a life-sized image of Elvis Presley covering the door. The Doctor paced the length of the diner, from front to back, but he didn’t see anyone he recognized.

Behind the polished Formica counter, a young man asked, “What’ll it be?”

Stalling for time, the Doctor said, “Um, Coca-Cola, if you please.” It was one of the few Earth brand names he could remember. Deep in a pocket of his tweed jacket, the Doctor found a couple of crumpled American one-dollar bills, which he handed over, hoping the payment was sufficient.

He set the beverage and the blue envelope on a table at the rear of the restaurant, bouncing a bit with excitement. He took a sip of the cola, then returned to the TARDIS on a whim: at the Great Bazaar, he’d acquired a straw that would increase carbonation, and this seemed as good an opportunity as any to try it out.

When he emerged back into the dining area, he came face-to-face with River, Amy, and Rory. From their expressions, he knew something terrible had happened: River and Rory were very pale, almost white, while Amy’s swollen, blotchy complexion and red eyes suggested she’d been crying for some time.

“Oh, this is cold,” River said. She appeared younger than she had when they’d met up on Vareda. A tiny tremor shook her voice, like a barely-perceptible earthquake. “Even by your standards, this is cold!” The Doctor felt he’d walked into the middle of a heated argument. He glanced at the faces of his friends, trying to reconcile their haunted, baffled expressions with the whimsical summons in the blue envelope.

“Or, ‘hello,’ as people used to say.”

“Doctor?” said Amy, her voice little more than a whisper.

“Just popped out to get my special straw—it adds more fizz.” The Doctor was playing for time, hoping that some lighthearted banter would ease the tension and perhaps cause one of his friends to say something that would give him a hint of what had happened, why they were so apparently thunderstruck to see him.

Amy was circling around him, as if his mere presence in the diner was something both unexpected and extraordinary. “You’re okay,” she said. “How can you be okay?”

“Hey, of course I’m okay! I’m always okay! I’m the King of Okay—oh, that’s a rubbish title; forget that one.” The Doctor kept prattling, waiting for one of them to tell him something useful. “Hello Rory!” The Doctor thumped the gobsmacked young man across the shoulders. “Rory the Roman, that’s a better title. And Dr. River Song! Oh, you bad, bad girl. What trouble have you got for me this time?”

She responded by smacking him straight across the face, with enough force for his head to be whipped around.

“Okay… I’m assuming that’s for something I haven’t done yet.”

“Yes,” said River, and the tone of her voice was deadly serious. “Yes, it is.”

“Good,” said the Doctor. “I’m looking forward to it.”

**The End**


End file.
